Moonlight
by Cheryl W
Summary: Set between ELAC and BL. Dean and Sam struggle to bridge the gap between them, brick by brick.
1. Chapter 1

Moonlight

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

Author's Note: This story is dedicated to both Larabiehn and Diane because they were wonderful enough to request that I try my hand at bridging the gulf between those lovely Winchester boys. Certain that the season will be building it's own bridge for Dean and Sam, I'm hoping to just get the foundation laid, not complete the construction. Though this entry is way too late now that we're heading for the 4th episode of the season, I hope you still find some merit in it. Will probably be 3 chapters.

Summary:Set between ELAC and BL. Dean and Sam struggle to bridge the gap between them, brick by brick.

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His rage spent, Dean, faltering, leaned against the Impala, his breath coming hard and pain spiking through his still recovering body. His blurring vision fixed on the Impala's abused trunk and a flicker of satisfaction surged through him. '_Oh yeah, destruction, now that's what I do best. Give me something to kill, to maim, to burn, to **hurt**. That's where Dean Winchester is at home. Not in this car, not on the road, ….not even with Sam_.'

Thoughts of his brother, of his brother's words, of his brother's _pain _gave Dean the strength to push away from the car and walk away, from the Impala, from the ravaged trunk, from Sam. Bracing his arm against the pain in his chest, he made his way through the car graveyard toward the road beyond, the sight of the abandoned and abused cars like a maze through his own convoluted, damaged soul. He was like these cars, too far gone to be restored, retaining too little merit to waste the effort to make whole, too beaten to even make a good run at the second chance he had been given.

'_Second chance_,' Dean scoffed, '_try third chance, first Roy LeGrange and now_…' he couldn't think it even, didn't want to contemplate it. If he went there, if he thought about the miracle that had been handed to him _again_..about the possible cost of that miracle… "Stop, just stop," he growled aloud, the cars the only audience to his gasping breath, stumbling steps. No, he had to keep his crap together, had to be the strong one now, had to become the tower that John Winchester was.

Staggering into a burned out Chevy El Camino, he pressed his hand harder against the line of stitches that tracked down his chest, hating the memories that sparked to life as his fingers rested where blood had once run freely, memories that he wished he could forget, memories of overwhelming agony, of his father's voice bitter with words that weren't his own. With Dean's every strike to the Impala the pain had blossomed, had warned that the car's metal wasn't the only thing contorting under his rage. But he hadn't cared, had welcomed the pain even as he felt vindicated as the metal faltered under his strength. He was still a force to be reckoned with, even broken, even with his soul a scattering of barely burning embers.

'_Sam doesn't want a force to be reckoned with, he wants a brother_,' came unbidden to Dean. Pulling away from the El Camino, Dean again set his sights unto the gravel road two hundred yards away. He didn't know how to tell Sam he couldn't have what he wanted. Couldn't make Sam see, had never been able to make Sam see that his brother was twisted and scorched and broken in ways that couldn't be fixed, not with time, not with care, not even with love. And that had been before…before their father had gone, had left Dean holding the key to a realm he had been bred to reign. But not all princes were kings, not all knights were heroes, and not all sons were their fathers.

'_I don't want this!!!_' Dean wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs, to scream it until his father heard wherever he was, until someone took the burden of what lay ahead away from his incompetent shoulders. Until someone undid what had been done, until someone reset the clock, until someone made things right and restored his father's life and let him die. It was wrong, him being alive, his father being dead. He knew that, _felt_ that, and if he looked into Sam's eyes, he'd see that Sam knew it too.

And maybe that was the worst of it, fearing that Sam knew how wrong this was, how it should be their father with him now and not Dean. How, in some screw up, his brother had been spared and his father had been taken from him, the father he was just getting to know again, the father that he loved and would have found a middle ground with…if fate hadn't misshuffled the deck. Sam's pain, Sam's guilt, Dean laid it all at his own feet and he couldn't bear to see Sam destroy his future in some strategy to assuage that guilt. '_It's_ _too little, too late,_' but his words hurt Sam as much as they had convicted him. '_Maybe I'm more like the old man than I ever thought. Hurt him to save him. Cut him out of my freakin' life to keep him safe. Do it the Winchester way. I've doing a bang up job so far in that department. One more big brother lecture and I can help Sam pack his bags.' _

The thought didn't hurt Dean as much as it scared him. Sam was his responsibility, now more than ever. '_Watch out for Sammy_,' it was practically his father's dying wish, it was an albatross as much as a life preserver, condemned him even as it saved him. Sam. He had loved him before he knew what it would cost him, what a risk it was, what a vulnerability it would become. After his mother had died, the risk had became clear, love was a live wire to pain, to loss, to desperation the depths of which he could drown in. But by then it had been too late, Sam had burrowed into his heart already, his small baby hands clinging to his fingers, his round face offering him a smile even as tears tracked down his own face, his baby cry hurting him in ways his mother's death had not. Some things could not be undone, no matter the cost, like loving his father, like loving Sam.

The gravel of the country road shuffled under his feet as he walked away from the setting sun, its brightness too hopeful for his mood, a hurricane with a tornado too cheery for the emotions raging inside him. Ignoring the stinging pain in his chest, the way his breath was harder to push from his lungs, the weakness in his legs, he put one foot in front of the other, determined to get away, to be gone, to be anywhere but where he was, even if it were just for a little while. But then Sam's words echoed in his head, '_I miss him, man. And I feel guilty as hell. And I'm not alright. Not at all. But neither are you. That much I know.'_

The words again sliced into Dean, harming him, killing him. When Sam hurt, he healed him, when Sam faltered, he supported him, he had always believed that instinct was hardwired into him. Until his father had died, until today when he stood there silent at the sound of Sam's voice breaking, unmoved by the sight of tears in his brother's eyes, untouched by the wave of pain Sam radiated. As he watched Sam walk away, numbly he realized that there wasn't any part of him that wanted to call Sam back, that wanted to keep his brother at his side, that could even make an effort to dredge false words of comfort.

'_Dad, I hope you're not watching,' _had gone through his mind as he realized how disappointed in him his father would beBut hard on that thought's heels came the rage, the fury, the truth of how disappointed he was in his _Dad_, in the man that wasn't supposed to die, in the man that didn't accept defeat, that would never leave until a job was done, the man that would never _ever_ fail. And then, it had just exploded, his barriers, his rage, his _acceptance_, his façade that he was OK, that he could make things alright for Sam, that he could protect Sam. Hell, he couldn't even look at Sam, not when he feared that condemnation, not when he was waiting for his brother to put 2 and 2 together and get 4, to know in his gut, as Dean did, that the wrong Winchester had died in that hospital.

And that stupid car had just sat there, mocking him, taunting him with what had been, what could have been, what never would be. His family had sat in that car once, whole, complete, happy, naïve. His dad driving, his mother in the passenger seat, him in the back, baby Sammy in his arms. He had taken that for granted, had thought it would go on forever, that happiness was something that came around everyday, that it couldn't go away, not by fire, not by a college application, not by harsh words spoken on a desolate back road and not by some evil that wasn't supposed to win. And suddenly, in that instance, he hated that car as much as he hated himself, hated the deception it had woven, the promise it had betrayed, the hope it had falsely offered. It lied, like the creatures he sought to kill. He loved it and it lied, it betrayed, it wounded him as deeply as any inanimate object ever could.

Now, alone on a country road, it didn't register with him that his legs had crumbled under him. It didn't matter that glass and gravel and dirt had embedded into knees that had slammed into the road. All he could feel was pain, in his soul, in his heart, in his freaking, pathetic, sorry excuse for a Winchester body. Pitching forward, his palms impacted with the gravel, joining the ranks of his glass embedded limbs as his breath raged from his lungs, loud to his own ears on a quiet road, his eyes clamped shut against the world around him, against the pain in him. Then it broke through to him like an intrusion into a suicide attempt, the sound of a truck engine rumbling toward him from behind.

Instantly Dean knew with relief that it wasn't Bobby's tow truck, the sound of the engine lacking the pinging the tow truck offered every three seconds. '_Thank God it's not Sam_,' was all Dean could feel, all he could dredge up to feel. He wasn't even annoyed at the thought that some country boy was about to drive by him, probably spit some tobacco chew on him as he clipped him with his fender and send him flying into the field. He would just rot there in the rows of corn, become extra fertilizer, cursed at his core, but maybe still good for something.

What he wasn't expecting was to hear the truck engine tack down, to hear the tires come to a halt on the road behind him, to hear a door creak open and the crunch of cowboy boots as they ran on gravel. The hand on his shoulder should have been like a live wire, should have had him flinching away, spewing gruff denials, spurring him to open his eyes and lance them into the stranger, their green depths flaring in indignation at the invasion to his personal space. Instead he let the touch go without reaction, let the man hunch down beside him, close, let the man's words spoken in a gentle southern drawl wash over him.

"Are you Ok?"

If Dean could have laughed he would have, if he could have conjured up enough energy to care about anything, he would have come up swinging. His words to Sam ringing in his ears, '_I swear the next person that asks if I'm OK, I'm going to start throwing punches._' His own words made him a lair, again, forever, always.

The man's next words were a continuation of the running joke fate was playing on him, "I'm a doctor…" but it was enough to cause him to open his eyes, to raise his look to the face of the forty something man who sported a mustache, beard and mullet under his cowboy hat. The man's concerned gaze had Dean recoiling more than anything else. Compassion was one thing he couldn't deal with right now, Sam was drowning him in it, bucket after bucket. One more ounce and Dean knew his fissures would leak, the dam would crumble and Dean Winchester would wash away like so much debris and inevitably Sammy would leap in to save him, and would suffer his fate. And _that_ Dean couldn't let happen. "I'm fine," he gruffly stated, initiating actions to back up his words, he pushed his hands off the road and leaned back on his hunches, turning his head to give the man the full watt of his Winchester steely gaze.

Instead of wariness, the stranger's blue eyes burned with more concern, at odds with the words he spoke, "People that are fine aren't usually kissing the gravel of the road."

But the man's tone was gentle and the intentional light touch of his hand on Dean's shoulder said more about the man's bedside manner than Dean wanted to know. Any more shows of compassion and Dean thought he might have the strength to throw at least one good punch before passing out. "Great, I gotta get a good Samaritan who thinks he's funny," Dean grumbled, fighting to keep his breath even, to swallow down the cough blocking his airways, needing the man to get back in his truck, to leave him to endure the pain in solitude.

"I've been known to tell a good joke or two," the man smiled but that look in his eye wasn't diminishing. "But it doesn't seem to me that you'd be up to laughing anyway. So how 'bout we get you off the road and let me see to…" slipping his right hand around Dean's left bicep, he prepared to help the younger man to his feet.

But Dean's right hand instantly wrapped the man's right wrist, the threat to the man's bones unspoken but implied if the stranger didn't release his hold. "Let go," Dean demanded, feeling as if he were trapped, secured by the man's grip, pinned under the man's too penetrating gaze.

Though the stranger had never heard a tone more cold, he had endured such heated looks from injured animals before, usually ones caught in a trap and ready to chew off their own leg to be free. "I'm real sorry, but leaving you here isn't something I can do," the man gently apologized but did not waiver from his intentions, his eyes still radiating that compassion, that concern that made Dean so wary and his hand still wrapped around Dean's arm. "I've never been good at walking away, from a fight or from someone hurting. It's gotten me in a heap of trouble but I think I'm getting too old to change my ways now."

"I don't need your help," Dean insisted through clenched teeth, increasing the pressure on the man's wrist, a part of him scared that he would follow through on his unspoken threat, scared that he _wanted_ to follow through with it.

The man's eyes dropped from Dean's gaze down to Dean's chest and then rose again, his renewed worry showcased in his blue eyes as they held Dean's. "It doesn't take my medical degree to know blood soaking through your shirt isn't a good sign."

Dean didn't look down, didn't need to, the feel of the pain was enough, told him everything he needed to know. '_Crap. Sammy's gonna flip out if I came in bloody. He's going to **worry**…more than he already is_.' "I'm not going to a hospital," he said, uncertain what he was implying with the words, what he wanted to imply.

"Fair enough. My clinic's only fifteen minutes away," the man said amicably, like the younger man's meaning was no mystery, like a compromise had come upon them easily. "Now, let's get you on your feet, nice and slow." With gentle strength the doctor aided Dean to his feet, unsurprised when the younger man pulled his arm free of his gasp when he determined himself able to stand and took a step back. He endured the injured man's hard look in silence, wondering if he'd end up slinging the kid over his shoulder and carrying him back to the truck, cursing and kicking.

The approach of another truck interrupted their staredown, shifting both of their gazes to the truck that came to a halt beside them. A seventy year old man with a hard worn face peered at them from across the interior of the battered blue truck. "Hey Doc, everything alright?"

"Yeah, Ronald," the doctor cheerfully replied, stepping forward to lean in the man's window, nearly blocking Dean from the man's view. "I thought I hit something on the road but I don't see anything now."

'_Yeah_, _he's a real comedian_,' Dean silently scoffed, but felt relieved that the doctor was making a pretty good door, blocking him from the old guy's view. One person gawking at his bloody t-shirt was one too many as far as he was concerned.

Ronald made a bitter reply to the doctor's inside joke. "Well those raccoons are about, getting my chickens. Hate those creatures." Then his world weary eyes drifted to the left of the doctor to land on Dean. "You're staying at Bobby's place right?"

Caught off guard at the man's knowledge of his presence at Bobby's, Dean cleared his throat, "Yeah."

"You must be Dean 'cause you look like you still got at least one foot in the grave," the old man determined bluntly, his eyes beginning to narrow as he tried to bring the young man into sharper focus. The doctor ruined his efforts by shifting in front of his view.

"Thanks," Dean grumbled, starting to remember why he didn't miss having grandparents.

Shooting Dean a look over his shoulder, the doctor explained, "Don't mind Ronald. He tends to call things as he sees them."

"Move aside, Clint. I wanna talk to the boy," Ronald ordered, waving his hand to the doctor's right when the Clint's eyes resettled on him.

"We're kinda in a hurry…" Clint began, again shifting to fill the passenger window with his frame.

"Nonsense. Man's gotta take time to know his neighbors and his neighbors' guests. Tell the boy to come a little closer, my old eyes ain't working that great today," the older man retorted, his eyes seeming entirely too sharp if the doctor was asked.

'What am I, show and tell?!' Dean wanted to growl, but a slight nod of the doctor's head, beckoned him forward and the smile seemed to promise him that this wouldn't hurt him. Yeah, he had heard that about needles too. Sighing, he braced himself for the pain and lumbered forward, his arm tight against his chest. It seemed to take him too long to maneuver the short distance, felt relieved that the doctor didn't shift away but remained in the window, allowing the old man's eyes to only take in Dean's face over his shoulder. Dean, not one to put a lot of faith in coincidences, knew he owed the doctor a debt for purposefully preventing the old man from getting a glimpse at his bloody shirt.

Now with his prey in sight, Ronald seemed happy as a lark. "Saw that car of yours." He let out a whistle. "What a hunk of junk," and if he saw the bristling in Dean's face, he ignored it. "If it had been me, I wouldn't have hauled it back here, no matter what your brother said."

Ronald's words latched onto Dean and even as he cursed himself for playing into the man's hands, he huskily asked, "And what did my brother say?"

At his question, both men looked at him with silent surprise, and Dean watched as compassion came alive in the old man's eyes before he spoke. "That if there was only one part working they weren't going to write off the car." The man hesitated, as if he was actually measuring his next words. "Bobby said something about you being in a coma and it not looking like you'd pull through, he thought maybe the car…."his voice faded away, broke if Dean heard right and his eyes flickered away to look out the windshield.

Dean wasn't prepared to see the pain the eyes when they resettled on him. "I lost a son…motorcycle accident. Bike was…." the previously gruff voice trembling and weak.

Clint gently spoke in the silence, "It's alright Ronald, you don't need to say it."

Shaking his head, Ronald swallowed hard. "No, enough things go unsaid, too many things, too many things between me and my boy." Pointedly his eyes fixed upon Dean's green eyes, reaching in and taking hold of Dean's very soul. "My boy was dead but that bike, that bike that he loved…it wasn't ruined, wasn't hardly scratched and I hated it, more than a person should hate a piece of metal. It wasn't right, hating it when it was myself I hated cause I should have told my son that I loved him, that I was proud of him, that though we never saw eye to eye, I still respected his choices, believed in him."

Ronald drew in a breath, sighed, looked out the front window again before he focused on Dean. "Maybe that's what your brother was afraid he'd never get to say to you, maybe that car was the last part of you he thought he'd ever have to hold onto. Something made out of metal, it's a hard thing to be left with, a bitter reminder that it's nothing without the one that loved it, someone who made you believe it was much more than metal and bolts and paint. So maybe your brother doesn't say things he feels but I know without a doubt he loves you, woulda been devastated by your death."

Dean's throat nearly closed on him as he wondered how he came to be standing in the middle of the road, sandwiched between cornfields listening to some old man talk about cars and loss and his brother. "And you know this how?!" his voice hoarse, bitter, scoffing. "All because he saved my car?!"

A sad smile turned up the old man's lips, his eyes brightening with compassion. "No, because the only part in that whole car that worked was the left hazard light. But you know what, that was enough for your brother, was enough to give him hope, was enough of _you_ to keep him sane. Love's a desperate thing, sees hope sometimes where there isn't any, believes in things it shouldn't, and the hang of it is, it succeeds where it should fail, saves what should by all accounts be lost. I've learned to not bet against love, it's a sucker bet every time." Then the man shifted the truck out of park and said, "Well, you take care, kiddo, say Hi to Bobby for me and make sure you drive that Impala over to my place when you've gotten it purring again. My wife's apple pie will make your trip worthwhile."

Finding his voice, Dean quietly challenged, "I thought you said the car was a hunk of junk."

"Yup. But remember, I don't bet against love either. See ya Clint," Ronald bade and the blue truck rumbled down the road, leaving Dean staring at the rising cloud of dirt it was kicking up.

Having not noticed the doctor's approach, Dean almost jumped when Clint gripped his arm.

"Come on before the rest of the town gets wind that they can grab a glimpse of you," Clint grinned, steering his charge toward his truck, finding himself surprised by Ronald's words as much as the Winchester kid. People were always surprising him.

"I got it," Dean gruffly announced, pulling free of Clint's hold when he realized the man was going to walk him to the passenger door, was probably going to offer to give him a push up into the seat. Skirting the around the truck, Dean came to the passenger door, opened it with a wince of pain and pulled himself up into the seat with a low growl of pain.

The good doctor was already sitting in the driver's side, patiently waiting as his passenger finally managed to close the truck door. His eyes on Dean, he gently ventured, "Do you want to call your brother, let him know…"

"No," Dean darkly replied, his eyes searing into the doctor's blue gaze.

Unable to shake the feeling that he was making a misstep, Clint tried again, "I could call Bobby and …"

"No," Dean's voice left no room for misinterpretation. "This clinic of yours, isn't fifteen minutes away only if you get the car moving right?" shooting a look of censure to his good Samaritan.

Snorting, Clint groused good-naturedly, "Now who's the comedian," as he started the truck, swung it around and headed back to his clinic.

TBC

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear what you think!

Cheryl W.


	2. Chapter 2

Moonlight

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

Author's Note: Thanks for tuning back in!

Summary:Set between ELAC and BL. Dean and Sam struggle to bridge the gap between them, brick by brick.

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Chapter 2

The doctor let silence be their traveling companion, though his worried eyes slid to Dean time and time again, reminding Dean so much of Sam that it hurt. Wearily resting his head back against the truck's passenger seat, Dean watched the cornfields streak by monotonously, his thoughts eager to corrupt the silence. '_A freakin' hazard light, Sam! You should have let the Impala go…should have let me go. The old man's wrong, my death wouldn't have broken you. You're strong, strong enough to even lose Dad and not lose yourself, even without me, in spite of me.'_

When cornfields melted away to forest, the doctor swung the truck onto a stone road that caused stones to ping off the metal of the truck. Dean winced at the sound, forgetting a moment that he wasn't in the Impala, its gleaming treasured frame wasn't taking this abuse…was beyond the harm of a few thrown stones…way beyond. The sight of the fresh hole in the trunk of the Impala flashed through Dean's mind, causing him to quickly sit up straight in the truck, to shut down his disbelief that he had done that, had done it and enjoyed it, had hurt something he loved. _'Nothing new there. I hurt what I love everyday…. just look in Sam's eyes. Look what happened to Dad…' _tears filled his eyes and he clenched his jaw so hard it felt like he was grinding down his teeth instantly

His eyes drawn more to the kid than the road, Clint said, "So how are the car repairs coming along?" hoping for a safe topic.

Dean snorted, turned to the doctor with a twisted smile, "There have been some setbacks." '_Yeah, like a hole ripped into its trunk'_. Without his permission his smile turned sad and his eyes dulled as they looked away, the next words that left him surprising even him. "Your pal Ronald's right, it's a hunk of junk. If I were smart I would turn it into scrape metal," his voice hoarse and low and self depreciating. And saying it, admitting it, it hurt him even as if freed him. Maybe it was time to cut his losses, to grab what he could and get out. But really he had only one thing on his list of things to grab: Sam. And with Sam came the past, and with the past came his Dad and the Impala and everything that was killing him from the inside out. It was all or nothing. Always had been his whole life. With love came duty, came fear, came pain, it was a hefty cost but he had gladly paid it because Mom had been worth it, Dad had been worth it, Sam had been worth it.

Dean's confession surprised Clint and if the kid had spared him a look he would have seen that in his facial expression. He hadn't expected Dean to open up to him, heck, even talk to him, let alone say what he had. It didn't make sense, not when he knew from Bobby that working on the car had been Dean's obsession since he stepped out in the junkyard and saw the wrecked Impala. Suddenly Clint hurt for the kid and Bobby's words came back to him, "_Dean shuts you out even as he draws you in_." When Clint spoke, he found his voice was gentle and a little hoarse from emotions he usually didn't wear on his sleeve, "So are you?" At Dean's raised eyebrows, Clint clarified, "Smart?"

Dean's own words ran through his mind, 'If I were smart I would turn it into scrape metal' but all he could think about was Sam, that turning his back on the car, on letting it go would be like letting Sam go, and no matter what his love for his brother cost him, Sam was worth it. He gave another snort and a small glimmer of light shone in his green eyes. "Being smart isn't something I've been accused of."

In surprise, Clint felt a weight lift from his chest, as if he had been holding his breath waiting for this stranger's reply, as if it _mattered_ what the kid decided to do with some crumpled car Clint had never laid eyes on. '_Yeah, he_ _draws you in… like a tornado_,' he silently scoffed, not really with bitterness but wariness. He tacked on a smile before he replied, "Yeah, I've never been accused of that either."

Pulling into the clinic parking lot, Clint cut the truck's engine. "I'll help you.." he began but Dean already had the door open and was sliding out of the trunk. "Guess that's a 'no' on letting me help," Clint grumbled to himself but quickly exited the car and met a slow moving Dean in front of the truck. Dean's glare forestalled his grab for the younger man's arm. Raising his hands in defeat, Clint muttered, "Bobby said you were stubborn," as he unlocked the front door to the clinic, stepped inside and flicked on the lights.

"What? You guys have a town meeting to discuss me and my brother? The trouble we may cause to your small town?" Dean growled as he stepped by the doctor, taking in the clean, friendly look of the small clinic's waiting room, magazines stacked tidily on tables, health insurance pamphlets in neat folders by the front desk and pictures of mountains and rivers hung around the room. It didn't miss his notice that each picture had a bible verse on it. '_Great, a religious good Samaritan. Can this get any worse?_'

"Bobby was worried about you," Clint gave as an answer, unlocking the door into the exam rooms and turning around to watch Dean as he stood in the waiting room, looking at the pictures on the wall.

It took Dean a moment to recall where their conversation was headed…right, why the whole town seemed to have intimate knowledge of him. Focusing on his good Samaritan, he refuted, "Bobby doesn't do worried," as he followed the doctor into an exam room that had no right to feel homey, regardless of the pictures and woodened carved fish on the wall and the stereo in the corner.

"Guess he does when it comes to you," Clint offhandedly revealed, nodding toward the exam table before turning his back on Dean to rummage through some drawers. "He really wanted me to come out to see you but he couldn't figure out a way to make sure you didn't walk out the door as soon as I said I was a doctor. Guess us meeting up today was divine intervention."

"Yeah, divine intervention," Dean sarcastically drawled, claiming a seat on the exam table, hating the feeling of vulnerability that crept up on him. He had been stitched up so many times it was commonplace, but it was usually by Dad's hands or Sammy's or even his own. But having someone else do it, it always set him up for pity, showcased his every weakness, cast him in the role of victim. He didn't much care for feeling like a victim, it made him wish for things he shouldn't need, didn't even deserve, like Sam at his side.

Before Dean was steeled for scrutiny, Clint was by his side, watching him, silent, seemingly hesitant. "My insurance is probably pretty tapped out but I have cash…" Dean began, wincing as he reached in his pocket for his wallet, having met this particular obstacle too many times in the past to misinterpret what was staying the doctor from getting to work.

Clint's hand caught Dean's arm, halting the younger man's action to pull out his wallet, to show him that he could pay for whatever services were bestowed on him. Green eyes shot to his in surprise, growing surprise as Clint spoke. "I'm not asking you to pay me."

Wariness sprang to Dean's gaze, "Why not? If Bobby promised to pay you if…"

"No, Bobby and I never talked about payment…we didn't have to," Clint gently interrupted. "You're someone who needs help and if I can give it, that's payment enough."

Bitterness and anger flared in Dean, here came the pity he hated. "A good deed to the less fortunate, huh? I'll rather you take my money." Yanking his arm from Clint's grasp he reached again for his wallet.

"I thought you of all people would understand that sometimes getting a chance to help someone is all you need for payment," Clint quietly said without accusation, removing his cowboy hat, scrubbing his hands and pulling on rubber gloves, his eyes on Dean the whole time.

"What do you mean by _me_ of all people?" Dean challenged, again feeling cornered by the man, surprised that the feeling didn't raise his hackles only made him feel like he was immersed in some staged intervention.

Coming to stand in front of Dean, Clint reached out with a pair of scissors and cut into the bottom of Dean's t-shirt, causing Dean to flinch away.   
"Hey, what are you doing?" Dean scoffed, looking at the cut in the bottom of his shirt, fingering the damage with disgust.

"The shirt's ruined anyway, no use putting yourself in more pain trying to get it off," Clint rationalized in his best southern calm drawl, hiding the fact that he was stunned and somehow saddened that the small ground he had made with Dean had seemingly been lost by his actions.

"It's not ruined, blood stains can come out," Dean countered sullenly, his fingers still examining the severed cloth of his t-shirt, as if the fabric represented something more dear to him. '_That's one thing I know, how to hide the aftermath of carnage of the flesh and soul. I can wipe away the blood and guts and wrongness of it all, make it like it never was, could make everyone think that the wounds underneath no longer existed, had never existed. Like some magician's trick…Abra-freakin-cadabra_.'

It didn't make Clint feel better, that Dean _knew_ how to get blood stains out of articles of clothing. "Well then I owe you a shirt," he promised, his eyes asking for permission this time to proceed. With a sigh, Dean released the t-shirt from his grasp and Clint deftly cut the cloth from hem to collar and made a similar cut down the back of the t-shirt. Sliding the tatters remains of the article of clothing from Dean, Clint said, "Alright, how about you lay down," his tone making it sound like he would take it as a personal favor if Dead did as he bade.

With a grunt of annoyance, Dean started to lie back on the exam table, hating how grateful he was to have the doctor's arm bracing his back, easing his descent. '_Dean Winchester: victim extraordinaire, just great.'_

A few minutes later, settled onto the exam table, the doctor's gentle but proficient hands removing broken stitches, dousing the reopened wound with anti infectious wash and restitching his flesh back together, Dean grudgingly admitted, if only to himself, that he appreciated the local anesthetic Clint had administered without his consent, was cowardly glad to not feel the needle make its journey through his flesh. In that respect, it sure beat the Winchester's brand of medical care. After all, there was only so much a bottle of Jack Daniels could do to deaden agony.

Never liking his injures to become the focus of anyone's attention, Dean reiterated, his tone less challenging and more curious this time as his eyes rested intently on Clint's features, "Why did you say that, that I should understand about helping someone is payment enough?"

Clint let his eyes flicker from the wounded flesh under his hands to Dean's green questioning eyes. "Way I hear it, you help other people, never looking for payment or even a thank you." Focusing again on his stitches, Clint returned, his tone easy, conversationally, inquiring, "Can't someone do that for you?" His eyes raised to settle on Dean when silence was the younger man's reply.

Adopting his favorite tactic, avoidance, Dean asked defensively, "You know what I do?" his eyes piercing the doctor's blue eyes as they met his, wondering just how far Bobby's tongue had run away from him.

A smile tugged up Clint's lips, "Not the specifics. Bobby and I made a pact a long time ago to keep things vague between us. I don't talk to him about medical procedures and he doesn't tell me about things that will make me sleep with the lights on."

A grunt of laughter sputtered from Dean. If he didn't watch himself he was going to start liking this guy. But Clint's next words told him that the good doctor welded words as well as the needle he held.

"So, you have this double standard going. You help people but never let someone help you. That's a tough way to live," Clint's words were hued with understated compassion, though he didn't dare let his eyes move again to Dean's.

"I shouldn't need saving!" Dean snarled, leaving unsaid what was screaming in his head, what had been screaming in his head since his father had died. '_I don't deserve to be saved! I shouldn't have been saved! Not at that cost….not at any cost!_'

Knowing that Dean was talking about more than allowing him to put stitches in his harmed flesh, much more, Clint warned himself to tread lightly. His eyes met Dean's pained gaze but instantly the younger man looked away, visibly clenching his jaw, shutting down. Hoping his words would be the right ones, Clint gently began, "Why shouldn't you need help?" finding himself leery to use the word Dean had, "saving", certain he would be treading on too tremulous ground with that one word. When Dean didn't react, with hostility or at all to his inquiry, Clint probed further. "Because you're stronger than anyone else? Smarter? More independent? Dean we all need help from time to time. Actually more times than we allow it. What if all those people you helped turned you down, said they would rather handle their problems themselves. Would you have just walked away, let 'em die because they believed that getting help was wrong?"

Shaking his head marginally, Dean denied, his voice hoarse and low, "It isn't about not needing help." '_If only it were that simple, if only someone **could** help me_.'

"Then what is it about?" Clint pressed, returning to his task, finishing the final stitch, hoping his lack of eye contact would allow the younger man the breathing room to open up.

Dean's voice was bitter and cold when he spoke. "You wouldn't understand."

"Why don't you just give me a chance..," Clint implored before he said, "All done with the stitches, you want to sit up while I see to your hands and knees?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, making the effort to sit up and again grudgingly glad for Clint's aid. Once he was upright, perched on the edge of the table, he watched as Clint removed his rubber gloves, threw them in a sterile trash receptacle and then took off his outer button down shirt to reveal his red t-shirt underneath. Dean was not prepared when Clint rejoined with an apology of "Sorry it's a little big…" even as he slid the shirt up Dean's arm before Dean could protest.

Satisfied at having maneuvered his shirt on the wounded man, Clint put on another pair of gloves, claimed a seat on a stool with wheels and watched Dean buttoned up the shirt. "I really am a pretty good listener," he supplied, taking Dean's left hand in his grasp and beginning to remove the glass, dirt and debris from Dean's palm.

Caught off guard by the man's gift of his shirt as well as his offer to listen, Dean felt his defenses weaken. He was holding so many cards close to his vest, and every one of them was threatening to tumble to the ground, to end up like a bad game of 52 pickup. Except the cards were pieces of him that were all sharp edges, that no longer fit together, that were leaving him more bloody and fractured the harder he held onto them. He barely recognized his own voice, despising the tremble, the bitterness, the loss emanating from every word. "I'm the go to guy, alright. I **do **the rescues, I **take** the risks, I **save** Sam, I save Da…" He swallowed it down, all of it, the sob, the overwhelming pain, the tsunami of guilt and looked away. A moment later, again facing Clint's too penetrating gaze, he cleared his throat, pushed forward, fell reassuringly back on what he was at his core, not a man, not a son, but a soldier. "It's my job and I ….I'm not supposed to need help. I can't _afford_ to need help. Before there was Dad but now…" He didn't even try to hold back his bitter laugh at his revelation. Because there was something else he was, even before he was a soldier, something that ran deeper in him, that he was failing at by leaps and bounds: being a brother, being Sam's brother. "You know what the kicker is, for the first time ever, I don't know how to protect Sam…._from me_."

"Maybe your brother doesn't need you to protect him, from you, from your pain. Maybe he needs…" Clint said, hurting for Dean, seeing the weight, the condemnation the younger man carried, seemingly needlessly.   
"I know what Sam needs!" Dean shot back, angered that this man, this _stranger _wanted to prove him wrong on the one thing he still knew, would _always_ know.

"You," Clint provided as if it was a statement of fact, as if it were the simplest thing, the clearest thing and it shocked Dean to his very depths. "He needs you. I mean that's obvious right? He doesn't need to cling to the twisted metal of your car as a monument to you, not when he has what he really wants right in front of him. And from what I hear, he held on pretty tightly to that car and that was just something that _reminded_ him of you. Sounds like if you want to pull away from him, you'll have the fight of your life on your hands 'cause he's holding on with everything he has."  
Dean was stunned at the insight. Sam needed Dad, not him, he _knew_ that. Knew that he was just what Sam had been left with, that it was only that position that had increased his value in Sam's eyes. But the timing was off on the doctor's theory, on Ronald's assessment that Sam had spared the Impala because he loved him. When the Impala's fate had rested in his brother's hands, Sam had had their Dad, alive and well, in no danger of leaving him. Dad was there for Sam ….and Sam still spared the Impala, still clung to something Dean loved, still clung to Dean, still found value in his brother even _with _his father around. Clint's words echoed in his head '_he held on pretty tightly to that car and that was just something that **reminded** him of you.'_ Sam needed him, worse still, Sam loved him, before and now. '_Aw Sammy, you should know better! You know me, out of all the people in this world, you really know me, know what I've done, what I'm capable of doing.'_

Having cleaned and bandaged both of Dean's hands, Clint said, startling Dean from his ruminations, "Now it's time I took a look at your knees. I'm guessin' you don't want me to cut your jeans," he joked, a twinkle in his eyes.

"Knees are fine," Dean gruffly retorted, shutting down, his emotions on overload, ready to escape, starting to slide from the exam table.

"Whoa, whoa," Clint objected, rolling his chair directly in front of Dean and raising his hand, halting Dean's attempt to stand up. Pulling a shard of glass from the fabric of the jeans at Dean's knees, Clint held the shard up to Dean, its tip stained with his blood. "Again there's a pretty good indication that fine is not what they are."

With a long suffering sigh, Dean informed darkly, "You're not cutting my jeans!" waving Clint to the side. When the doctor moved out of his way, Dean slid from the exam table, hating that Clint's hand on his arm steadied him. Dropping his jeans to reveal his boxers underneath, Dean reclaimed his seat on the exam table. Quietly he watched Clint meticulously pull out the glass shard, stones and dirt that polluted the scraped bloody skin of each of his knees, his thoughts on his revelation. He didn't deserve it, but he had Sam's love and whether it was true or not, Sam _thought_ he needed him. And suddenly Dean knew that was enough for him, enough to keep him keeping on, enough to send him back to Sam knowing his place in the world, even if he didn't quite fit into it anymore, wasn't worthy to fit in it anymore. He would just have to fake it, like he did with everything else.

Finishing his final tasks, Clint rolled his chair across the room to a locked cabinet, unlocked it and withdrew three packets that held 2 pills each and rolled back to Dean's side. "Here, take these now and I'm going to send some more along for the next few days," he explained, pushing the 2 pills from the packet and holding them out to Dean like he was a child that was incapable of extracting the pills himself. Extracting them Dean could do, taking them, that was a different matter entirely.

"No," was Dean's abrupt reply, making no move to take the pills from Clint's outstretched hand, his eyes telegraphing that he wasn't going to budge on this. He had been in a coma, had lost precious time he could have spent with his father, he couldn't afford to lose any more time, to be unaware of his surroundings, to not be there for Sam. '_Sam who you abandoned today without a backwards glance, Sam who probably noticed by now that you are AWOL, Sam who was worried enough about you without you running away like a four year old._' He cursed himself a thousand times over as he thought of how Sam might feel about his absence. Urgently, he wanted to get back to Sam, to ease whatever emotions his departure had surged in his brother. "I gotta get back to…" he stated, hopping off the table, pulling his jeans on, making to slip by the doctor.

"Take these pills and I'll _drive_ you back to your brother," Clint bargained as he stepped in Dean's path. When a dark look settled in Dean's eyes, Clint knew the younger man understood the terms of the bargain. Lightly the doctor speculated, "Course if you want to walk back, might take you a few hours…if you make it without collapsing."

"You are one scheming sawbones," Dean growled, ruthlessly grabbed the pills, the water glass that suddenly appeared in the doctor's hand and downed both pills.

Proud of himself, Clint said cheerfully, his southern drawl coming through loud and clear, "Alright, my job's done. Now I better get you back to your brother before he takes the county apart looking for you."

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It was going on six o'clock, the hamburger was thawed out and Bobby had been ready to eat for the past half an hour. Being a man living alone for the past couple of years, he was unaccustomed to waiting to eat, to _needing_ to wait to eat. And he knew it wasn't manners holding him back from frying up the burgers, splattering them with ketchup and consuming them with a beer. It was something even more foreign, it was the enjoyment he got sitting down to eat with John Winchester's sons, watching their byplay, drawn in by their pain, touched by their obvious love for one another. It reminded him, if only slightly, of his own sons, now long gone from the house. His two boys had always been more interested in one upping each other in life than watching each other's backs, course they hadn't taken up the hunt like John's boys. But in his mind, Bobby knew that wouldn't have changed his sons' dynamics that drastically. No, the bond Sam and Dean had…it wasn't commonplace and it sure wasn't learned from their father, God rest his soul.

Bobby had no delusions that he could help the boys wade through their grief, all he could do was give them a place to stay, food to eat and the room and some of the parts to get the Impala back on the road. The Impala, now that had seemed a lost cause…until Dean put his hands to work, intending to forsake everything else, sleep, food, Sam. But to Bobby's surprise, Sam had laid down the law, had practically threatened to force feed Dean, had warned and followed through with turning out the lights in the junkyard every night at midnight, forcing Dean to stumble back to the house in the dark and find his way to the bedroom that had once belonged to Bobby's oldest son. The only thing Sam had not forced on Dean was his own presence. Instead, he gave Dean his space, though Bobby could tell by the haunted look in Sam's eyes as he sat around the house that it cost him dearly to be separated from his brother. But Sam checked on Dean a few times throughout the day, making sure most of those trips went unnoticed by his big brother.

And Bobby had thought that things would be better after they had spent some time together in his backfiring minivan, picking up the hunt, tangling with something they could vent their anger against. But they had come back quieter, especially Sam, well Dean, he couldn't get any quieter than before unless he turned mute. And now they weren't here, neither of them. It made Bobby uneasy, uncertain if it were a good sign, that maybe they were off together somewhere, or a bad sign that they were both off on their own separate path of destruction. Sighing, he headed out the door, knowing that the Impala was the one magnet that drew both of the boys. Surely he'd find one or both of them around the hollowed out car.

At first he thought he had been wrong, that he had overestimated the car's pull on the brothers. Though no noise heralded the repair work and no legs stuck out from under the undercarriage, Bobby still made his way to the car, was going to search the perimeter. As he came around the back of the car, Bobby nearly stepped on Sam as he sat on the ground, back leaning against the Impala's rear bumper, his legs drawn up to his chest, his eyes flying up to Bobby's shifting instantly from hope to despair. '_Ah crap_,' rang through Bobby's head as he wished himself back in the house, chomping on a hamburger in solitude, not contemplating what bombshell had exploded to give Sam that shell shocked look.

A sensitive man would have asked Sam what was wrong, how he could help. But Bobby wasn't packaged with sensitivity; his ex wife had made that clear. So what came to his mind just came out, "Where's Dean?" By the flare of pain in Sam's eyes, his question, insensitive and all was right on the money. Whatever pain Sam was drowning in, it had something to do with his brother, a brother that was suspicious absent from his obsessively self appointed task of restoring the classic car.

Sam had thought he had gotten in control of his emotions again, thought that the sobs that had ripped from him half an hour ago had restored his equilibrium. But then he had heard footsteps and had hoped...but it had not been Dean returning to the car, to him, and that just made everything worse, that false hope, the bitter truth that Dean had not returned, may not return. His brother's name from Bobby was like a cold knife at his jugular, cutting off his air, making swallowing a risk with consequences, drawing blood, threatening to snatch away everything he had left. "Gone," he croaked out, answering Bobby's question, answering the question he had been asking himself for the past hour without reply. Pulling his eyes from Bobby, letting them rest on the junkyard, unfocused, shimmering in tears, his voice broke as he repeated "Gone."

Shuffling on his feet, Bobby wondered if he could just walk away, let Sam deal with things on his own. It would be how John Winchester preferred to deal with things, his son couldn't be so different right? '_Wrong and you know it_,' he realized and found himself leaning against the Impala instead of hightailing it back to the house. He noticed the damage to the trunk right away and couldn't help exclaim, "What happened to the trunk?!'

Sam wrapped his hands around his knees and drew further onto himself, choking on the name, "Dean." Wishing he hadn't witnessed Dean destroy what he loved, regretting that he had stood rooted to the spot behind a row of cars, unable to force himself back to Dean's side, to pull the crowbar from his brother's hands, to stop the symbolic self inflicted abuse. Hating himself all over again for forcing the reaction from Dean, for thinking that getting a reaction from Dean, any reaction would be better than letting Dean continue to shut him out, would let the brother he loved emerge from the silent and cold presence that stood in for his brother since their Dad had died. "I…I told him I wasn't alright, that I knew he wasn't alright and then…."

He could still hear the shattering of the window and then came the sound of the crowbar tearing apart the Impala, making its metal crumble under its steel, against its owner's rage and pain and grief. And each strike was another stake in Sam's heart, not for the Impala's damage but for Dean's crippling soul shattering damage that Sam didn't know how to mend. Didn't know if he _could_ mend.

"I….he….I looked….." Sam started a few times, unable to say again that Dean was gone, unable to tell Bobby that he had returned too late, had gathered his courage, had gathered his love for Dean and came back for him, came back to try and stitch together whatever he had ripped apart, even if that meant Dean remained behind his barriers. But Dean hadn't been there, not working on the Impala, not in the junkyard scavenging parts, not in the cornfields that Sam had stood by, calling his brother's name. And with his heart pounding in his chest, Sam had ran for the road, a thousand thoughts vying for attention, only to find the road desolate, offering no sight of Dean walking away or back to him, no signs that Dean had ever been there, or had hitched a ride and would never be there again. Just gone.

Looking up to Bobby he tried to explain, tried to make someone see that he had done what he did out of love, love for Dean. Not to hurt him, never to hurt him. "I just wanted him to open up, to let him know it's alright if he's not….." his words choked off, uncertain how to express what he wanted to say.

"Your Dad," Bobby supplied quietly, feeling wrung out at the lost look in Sam's eyes.

The insight knocked the breath from Sam, causing his breath to hitch, his back to stiffen. Was that what he was trying to say, was that what Dean _needed _him to say?! "I didn't…." Sam faltered, tilted his head in wonder. "Is that what Dean thinks I want him to be? Dad?" disbelief and shock coating his words.

Bobby shrugged, feeling out of his realm of comfort. He was as comfortable talking about emotions as John Winchester had been. And he sure hadn't meant to lead the kid down a path he wasn't heading.

Conviction overrode the despair in Sam's eyes. "I don't want Dean to be Dad. I love him more because he's not like…." Sam broke off, shamed at what he almost said, at what he thought.

The conversation having steered into a realm he did understand, Bobby came forward and leaned against a Mustang that had long past her prime, allowing him to face Sam head on. "Sam, my father wasn't a saint and him being dead didn't turn him into one in my eyes. But I loved him, faults and all. You can love your Dad, miss him like crazy and still not like the sob."

Sam smirked sadly, shook his head, swiped at a tear that overran his eye. "It feels so …wrong. I keep feeling like…I don't know, that I should forgive him everything he ever did but I …Now when I _tried_ to be the son I thought he'd want me to be, then Dean….Dean got so pissed and ….I've never had to choose between pleasing Dean or Dad, letting Dean down or letting Dad down. They were always the same, if Dad was happy with my choices, then Dean was, if I let Dad down …"somehow admitting that he had let Dean down hurt worse than saying he let his father down.

Thrown back into unknown territory, Bobby frankly confessed, "I'ld like to give you some great advice Sam, but I don't have any. I'ld tell you what to do to get through to Dean but I don't know your brother. He's never let me in and he sure isn't going to start now. Dean's always been…guarded, even with your Dad, maybe especially with your Dad."

Bobby's depiction didn't mesh with Sam's vision of the father son relationship he thought he knew. "What do you mean guarded especially with dad?"

"Ah, Sam, I'm not good with this stuff," Bobby scoffed, really wishing he had just counted his blessings and had eaten alone. "I just know John wished Dean would talk to him more, would let him know how he felt."

"He traded that away when he turned Dean into his own personal soldier," Sam bitterly pointed out before the shame hit him. Shaking his head, biting his lip, it was a moment before he could force air from his lungs, "There I go again, arguing with Dad…_about_ Dad when he's not even _here_! It's just that…things just weren't the way they should be, the way Dean deserved them to be, not when we were growing up, not when I was gone. I know Dad loved us but…." he couldn't say it aloud, thought it would condemn him forever just thinking it. It was hard even hearing it come out of Bobby, quiet and without accusation.

"But it's not enough… that he loved you. It doesn't make all the rest of it alright."

"Should it?" Sam breathed out, wanting some proof that he wasn't the worse son that ever was born, that it was OK to still feel…what John Winchester had always evoked from him, anger, frustration, …love.

"No. But it is a lot," Bobby allowed.

"Yeah, I know it is," Sam exhaled the words, felt some of the weight lift from him, some of the gnawing guilt. Silence fell between them, encompassed the junkyard. Sam's words were strong even as they were intermingled with down to the bone yearning. "I want Dean to be Dean, that's all I've ever needed from him. He's always been more than I deserve. Still is."

Bobby could only nod, feeling his own chest tighten. It took him a few moments before he could talk. "You better come on back to the house and get yourself put together. Your brother's gonna feel bad enough when he gets back about breaking the Impala, he can't go thinking he broke you too."

"How do you know he'll come back?" Sam quietly implored, his eyes fixed on Bobby, needing a life line thrown to him, needing to be reassured that his brother was coming back.  
"'Cause you're here," Bobby stated boldly, without a shadow of a doubt glimmering in his eyes. He didn't know about expressing emotions, especially ones choked with grief or guilt but he knew about loyalty and love…these two Winchester boys had taught him about such things.

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TBC

Thank you for the wonderful reviews and for taking time to read this story!!!

I had the final chapter's conversations fleshed out prior to CSPWDT but now that Dean and Sam made advances in their rift, I'm not sure if I'll modify what I wrote to keep this little story true to events prior to that episode or if I'll let what I wrote stand and therefore venture into AU where I had Sam kind of give his answer to Dean's question at the end of CSPWDT. Personally I'm hoping we hear what Sam's reply is in the next episode so we don't have to rely on our own wild imaginations. Plus watching Jensen and Jared do the emotional scenes is so rewarding. I couldn't draw a breath at the ending of CSPWDT! It was just too…painful, powerful…and Dean crying broke my heart! Well, if you have an opinion on which way I should take the final chapter, head off to AU land or keep it true to events that could have happened between ELAC and BL, drop me a line.

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.


	3. Chapter 3

Moonlight

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

Author's Note: As usual, I've turned more wordy than I planned to. Therefore I need to tack on another chapter after this one to tie this rambling thing into a bow. The final chapter to come will include the deep conversations and make the title of this story make sense. Don't you hate authors who just can't stop yaking…ops..like I'm doing right now! Right, I'm shutting up.

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Chapter 3

Sam couldn't move, couldn't tear his eyes away from Bobby's front door, couldn't _breath_, not without Dean. All he could do was sit in the tattered armchair and wait. Wait for Dean to come back, wait for the return of the only thing in his life that he cared about, wait for the only person who could make him _want_ to take another breath. Waiting, it was a crucial skill for Sam, waiting for his prey during a hunt, waiting to slip away from his family and get the things in life _he_ wanted, waiting to find his father, waiting to get revenge. If anyone should have been an expert at waiting it should have been him. He should have been able to do it without his heart thudding painfully in his chest, without his gut twisted in knots, without his hands trembling in his lap, his legs aching to run.

'_I can't even do this right_,' Sam internally chastised himself, adding it to the growing tally of wrongs that he didn't know how to make right. '_I didn't say the right things to Dean, walked away when I should have stayed, got angry when I should have been happily relieved, when I should have said I love you Dad, I said words that meant I hate you. Everything I do …it's all too little, too late, realizing how much I loved Dad, accepting the truth of just how much I need Dean, things I should have known before Dad was gone …before Dean left.'_

The word 'left' echoed in his soul like a ricocheting bullet, damaging everything in its path, making him cold inside, causing him to wrap his arms around his chest, to hunker down in the chair. It hurt, badly, that Dean had left, that he _could _leave, that he _wanted_ to leave, that he had left _him_. And for the first time, Sam knew what it felt like to be the one abandoned, to feel the bitter taste of betrayal, to feel the hollowness of knowing who you were, what you offered wasn't good enough, not for the person you loved the most.

Biting his bottom lip, Sam swallowed down a sob and sat up straighter in the chair, his grief morphing unexpectedly into anger. '_Why isn't it enough Dean! Why aren't I enough! Dean, you're enough for me…you have been all I needed to keep going, through Jess's death, through finding out I'm a freak, through Dad's death. You've seen me through it all, you standing at my side, it's kept me here, kept me sane, kept me crawling out of my emotional hole to face another day, kept me smiling instead of crying. I know you loved Dad but Dean, I'm still here, I'm with you…all the way. Except you aren't here! So where are you, Dean?! Where are you!'_

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The fifteen minute return trip had started to feel like an eternity to Dean and it took every ounce of his limited resources of restraint to not reach across the truck and apply his own foot to the gas pedal, heavily. '_If Sam came looking for me…if he thinks I'm gone' _Dean cut the thought off there,not allowing himself to draw conclusions of Sam's reaction. Instead he latched onto the notion that his absence had gone by unnoticed, that Sam never knew that he had walked away from him, from everything, that he would not have to pay a price for his momentary betrayal. But as the truck finally bounced off the country road and negotiated the rutted driveway up to Bobby's house, that pipedream vanished as Sam burst from the front door, stalking toward the approaching truck as if he just dared it to try and run him over.

Clint, bringing the truck to a halt before he made Dean's brother a hood ornament, shot a commiserating look to Dean, "He doesn't look too happy to me."

"Really?" Dean drawled with dark sarcasm, his eyes not leaving the stalking predator that was Sam. Reaching for the door handle, he found it ripped from his grasp as Sam opened the door from the outside.

"Where have you been?" Sam demanded in that low growl that was the predecessor for yelling, his eyes darker than Dean liked them.

Even as he told himself he was grateful to be facing Sam's wrath instead of his hurt look, Dean felt stung by Sam's anger. It sharply reminded him of his Dad's anger when he had screwed up on a hunt, had not been in the right position at the right time, when he had failed in his father's eyes. Swallowing, Dean chose silence as a reply and dropped his eyes.

When Dean's eyes dropped, Sam's heart dropped with them. He knew that reaction from Dean, had seen it too many times, had always felt the _hurt_ his brother would never voice. Bitterly, Sam knew his tone had been too close to their father's, the words too judgmental, too angry, too condemning. And it came back to him sharply, cutting through the rose colored hue he had viewed his brother's relationship with his father, the way his father could wound Dean with words alone, with a look, with an offhanded complaint about the state of the Impala's exterior. Carelessly, pointedly, cruelly, John Winchester had always been able to harm his seeming invincible son in every way possible.

'_And now I've taken up that trait,_' Sam sickly concluded, hating that Dean's eyes were still down, that his brother was hurting, that Dean _allowed_ Sam the power to hurt him, just as he had allowed his father that same power. '_By loving us, he's given us the ability to hurt him and he willingly accepts it…because he loves us more than he'll ever love himself.' _It was a bittersweet revelation, steeling Sam's breath away, scaring him more deeply than just about anything else he had faced. The last thing he wanted was free license to hurt Dean, for Dean to be OK with getting hurt by the ones he trusted, loved.

Sam wanted to apologize, wanted to beg his brother's forgiveness for channeling John Winchester, for hurting him, for making him want to leave, for making him probably regret coming back to him. Watching Dean slid out of the truck, seeing his brother wince in pain, Sam was jarred from his anguish. Instantly Sam took note of the way his brother braced his left arm across his chest, then he fully took in his brother's appearance. Dean's ash white face, the too large shirt that hung on his frame making Sam's bigger than life brother seem small, frail, vulnerable, the look that had flashed in the green eyes, the _pain_ that had sparked through the barriers his brother had fortified himself behind so well lately. "Dean?" Sam called out with concerned uncertainty, right before he leapt forward to grab his brother's shoulders as the older man swayed, stilling his brother against the side of the truck. Bending his head to look at Dean's bowed face, Sam urgently pressed, "Dean, are you hurt?! What happened?!"

But what ran through Dean's head remained unspoken even as he raised his eyes to meet his brother's anxious gaze. '_I screwed up again, Sammy! Ran when I should have stood my ground, fought against the grim reaper when I should have conceded the game. When am I going to get it right and what will it cost me until I do? You?!'_

Feeling like Dean could use a fall guy about now to deflect his brother's anger and maybe more so his brother's blossoming concern, Clint finished circling the truck and came to stand beside Dean. Facing Sam, Clint began the lie, hoping he looked remorseful. "I didn't see him walking along the road…" but the words faded away as Dean's brother's eyes snapped to him.

Fury and fear mixed in Sam as the stranger's words evoked mental pictures. Dropping his hold on Dean who now was supported against the truck, Sam stepped menacingly toward Clint, too frayed to worry about the moral dilemma of murder.

Shocked at the lethal danger Sam projected, Dean, shoving himself off the truck, stumbled between Clint and Sam. Pressing his hand against Sam's chest, Dean explained, his voice breathless with pain and desperation, "He's kidding, Sam. I just tripped, got a little banged up. The doc helped me…" he insisted, putting more pressure on his brother's torso when Sam's stance didn't tack down. "Sam…" he implored, finally earning Sam's troubled gaze. "I'm OK," Dean reassured steadily, feeling the pounding of his brother's heart under his hand.

Drawing in a shaky breath, Sam nodded and let his rage seep through his walls, let the sight of Dean right there in front of him calm him, let the feel of his brother's hand reassure him that this wasn't some dream he'd wake from and find himself alone. But a moment later a crease settled on his brow as he realized that something was off with the way Dean's hand felt against his chest. Dropping his gaze to his own chest, Sam wrapped his hand around Dean's wrist and pulled his brother's hand back for his inspection. The white bandage taped to Dean's palm spiked his worry higher as his eyes looked accusingly toward Dean, "Yeah, you're OK. You are swaying on your feet, your face is whiter than Casper's, you have a bandage on your hand," he grabbed Dean's other hand and turned it over before amending, "hand**s**! And why aren't you wearing your own shirt?!"

"Strip poker game," Dean quirked back, pasting on a cocky smile, proving that he could be nearly out on his feet but he still had his quick wit, which by Sam's expression, his brother didn't value.

"He tore out some of the stitches in his chest," Clint generously supplied, as if he was clueless to the peril Dean had saved him from. "I think I put in about fourteen new ones."

Throwing a dark look over his shoulder at the doctor, Dean sourly demanded, "What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?!"

With the innocence of a cat with a canary in his mouth, Clint pointed out, "Oh, that only applies if payment was received."

"Nice," Dean grumbled, a scowl on his face as he turned his head forward and came face to face with his little brother's alarmed expression. "Sam…" he began in his 'don't-go-all-soft-on-me' warning tone.

"Don't '_Sam_' me," Sam growled, dropping Dean's hands only to step around to flank his brother, wrapping his arm around Dean's waist. "Let's get you…" his tone going gentle again as he prodded his brother forward.

"Stop using that tone and stop talking like that, saying 'us' when you mean 'me'," Dean groused, making no move to pull from his brother's hold as they made slow progress toward the house, passing Bobby on the way.

"Alright, how about 'Get your scrawny butt in the house, Dean!' that work better for you," Sam retorted without rancor, his other hand snaking out to latch onto Dean's elbow when Dean stumbled on some loose ground in the yard.

"Yeah, yeah I like that better," Dean conceded, his tone more breathless than he liked. Sparing a look from the goal ahead of him, namely the house, to Sam, Dean smirked weakly, "Except if anyone's butt is scrawny it's yours, Sammy."

"In your dreams," Sam sallied back, drawing closer to Dean.

Bobby came to stand beside Clint, their joint attention on the two Winchesters. Lowly, Bobby censoriously hissed, "Confessing that you hurt Dean?!!" Shaking his head in disbelief and wonder, Bobby snorted with renewed humor, "You really like livin' on the edge, don't you?"

"You said Sam wasn't as dangerous as Dean," Clint accused, his focus still drawn to the brothers as they climbed the stairs of the porch, shoulder to shoulder.

"He isn't," Bobby defended heatedly but then Clint could practically hear the smile in his voice when he continued, "unless you mess with his brother. And then, he makes Dean look like a pussy cat." The two men's eyes met then, and each chuckled quietly, as they heard the house screen door clank shut, announcing the official departure of Sam and Dean.

Closing the passenger side door of his truck, Clint leaned back against the vehicle and let his eyes rest on his friend. "That bond of theirs, they don't know how special it is, do they?" his voice gentle, sad, sprinkled with a yearning for something he never had with his own brother.

The question gave Bobby pause, made him think of the way the two brothers watched each other, seemingly reading things in each other that no one else ever could, things that wouldn't be said, couldn't be said, that didn't _need_ to be said. With a shrug, Bobby smiled and gave his reply, "They might, they just might."

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Ascending the stairs to Bobby's house, Sam had stepped closer to Dean, held tighter to the muscled waist, to the person who meant the most to him, had always meant the most to him. And maybe that was part of what drove him to try and do his father's wishes now, his guilt, his betrayal, his …relief. Watching his father flatline…it wasn't the same…it hadn't _felt_ the same as it had when Dean was dying, when his brother's heart refused to beat, when the monitors told Sam, more brutally than any words could have, that his brother was slipping away from him. The pain, the fear, the gut wrenching despair as his father was pronounced dead… it didn't have the power to break him…not when Dean was there, not when he had what he needed to go on at his side. '_And I'm not letting Dean go, not now, not ever again_.'

If Dean noticed how tightly Sam was holding onto him, he didn't react, if he saw the shine of tears in his brother's eyes, he didn't say a word, if he felt the tremble in the body that gave him the strength to move forward, he didn't let on. It was enough that Sam was there, that he wanted him back, that he hadn't said, '_since you saw fit to leave, you can just stay gone_' like his father might have. But then again, Sam had never been like John Winchester, not in all the ways that counted to Dean.

Guessing Sam's intended destination though they had barely made it into Bobby's cluttered "research" room, Dean croaked out, "Couch." Blaming the effort he had to make to keep his legs moving forward, even with Sam's help, on the pain killers the doctor had practically force fed him. Dean rallied what strength he had as Sam headed for the doorway that would lead them into the living room where Dean's destination of choice sat.

"No. **Bed,** Dean," Sam countered, intending to muscle Dean past the couch and into his assigned bedroom. He was unprepared when Dean's hand shot out and braced onto the frame of the living room's doorway. Sam halted their progress, unwilling to use force on his brother, not now, not when he looked as vulnerable, as fragile as he did. Sam met Dean's eyes with a plea in his own, "Dean you need to rest, you've been hurt, again…." Sam found the rest of his words wouldn't come, not when Dean was looking at him so earnestly.

Raising his eyes to Sam's, Dean spoke, his words a quiet confession as much as an honest appeal. "Sam, I've been in a coma. I've lost enough time sleeping…I don't want to lose anymore. Ok."

His brother's appeal cut Sam to the quick, lacerating any objections he would have offered. So it was with a nod of his head of concession that Sam led Dean to the couch and eased his brother's battered body down onto the cushions. He didn't miss the grimace of pain that flashed over Dean's face as he settled back against the too threadbare cushions. Gently, Sam claimed a seat beside Dean, careful not to jar the other man as he drew his right knee onto the couch and turned to face his brother. "Dean…" he began, the catch in his voice unavoidably loud in the quiet room.

And then the quiet was broken by the entrance of Bobby and Clint, by Bobby's question, "I'm going to fry up some burgers. How many do you each want?"

Simultaneously, the Winchester brothers replied, "One" and "None".

Finding himself the focus of three admonishing looks, Dean retorted, "What?" his eyes sweeping from his brother to Clint to Bobby.

"He'll take one hamburger," Sam insisted lowly, his eyes on Dean instead of the person whose question he was answering.

"Sam…" Dean protested, remembering having similar conversations with Sam over a week ago when they first arrived at Bobby's place.

Prepared to level a well used speech at his brother, Sam forced his words to be gentle even as they were insistent. "You need to eat Dean. Like you said, you were in a coma…and now you're hurt again..and…"

Unable to bear to see the worry in Sam's eyes, Dean relented with put upon grace, "Fine, I'll eat the burger." It was enough of a concession to get Bobby headed toward the kitchen, with Clint trailing behind him. Patting Sam on the knee, Dean prodded, "So how about you go get your hurt brother a beer."

Leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, Clint's presence had been overlooked by the two brothers until he spoke. "I'll put those extra painkillers on the table…you know, for when the painkillers you took half an hour ago wear off," making his point with at least the younger of the two men before he disappeared into the kitchen to supervise Bobby's questionable cooking skills.

Lanced with Sam's angry eyes, Dean pulled on a fake smile. "I meant _root_ beer of course."

"Yeah, right. Dean..?!" Sam warned, his tone screaming 'I'm at my wits end'.

"Hey, I was just trying to speed along the healing time," Dean quirked because it was easier to joke than to face Sam's concern, to accept the truth that what hurt him just might hurt Sam.

But Sam didn't accept the levity Dean was trying to white wash the situation with, couldn't, not when there was pain etched in his brother's face, seared into the green eyes. "Dean, I mean, really how did you pull the stitches?" his voice earnest, his expression open, his breath held as Dean's reluctance hit him. Suddenly, Sam recounted the events of the past days, the days since Dean went AWOL from the hospital and his face lost all color. "Oh no, the job! I should have never forced you to take that last job when you weren't healed…" Remembering more, Sam's eyes darken in horror. "Crap, I hit you! In the van, to wake you up, I hit you in the _chest_!" his voice broke on the last word, his breath whooshing from him as if he had received a blow to his own chest.

"Sam…" Dean drawled, needing to stop his brother's self inflicted torture.

But Sam's guilt was powerful enough to overshadow everything. "Dean, I am so sorry…I didn't remember…I thought…you never said…I shoulda _guessed_ since the cuts on your face didn't heal…I just didn't put it together." And if there was a worst brother on the planet than himself, Sam doesn't want to meet him, ever.

Knowing that words alone wouldn't be enough, Dean gripped Sam's arm, stopping its arch through the air, its traumatized journey to Sam's hair, anchoring Sam's attention to him. "Sam! It wasn't you! And it wasn't the clown…" Unable to help himself, Dean smirked bitterly, "Geez that sounds more crazy than most of the things I find myself saying."

Believing Dean's denials, Sam found it did little to help him discern the truth. But then again, that was probably his brother's intentions. After all, Dean was the king of deflection, the master of smoke and mirrors, an expert at façades and barriers. Until today, until Sam was gone, until he thought he was alone, until he shattered inside like the car window, until a hole was ripped into his soul like the metal of the Impala, a hole that couldn't be veiled, not from Sam, never from Sam. Knowing the edge his brother stood on, Sam unmasked his own heart, let concern, let love, let worry leak into his voice, "Then what happened, Dean? How did you pull out the stitches? What happened to your hands?"

Clenching his jaw and pulling his touch from his brother's arm, Dean swung his look away from Sam and dropped his eyes to the floor. It was underhanded, Sam using that tone on him, looking at him like that, caring enough to want to know why his shirt was gone, why his hands were bandaged, why fourteen new stitches sought to bring his tortured flesh together.

Despairing that Dean was constructing yet another wall to keep him out, Sam drew in a shaky breath before he implored, "Why did you leave Dean?" his heart pounding in his chest, his eyes taking in every facet of his brother.

"I overdid it working on the car, alright," Dean confessed the easier truth, his eyes shooting up to Sam's, daring his little brother to refute his claim.

Dean's answer, even though it was to the easy question was a life line for Sam, kept his brother within his reach, closer to him rather than farther away and that was good enough for Sam right now. Was so much better than the alternative he dreaded. "Working _on_ the car….or working _over_ the car?" Sam quietly risked, his eyes shying away to the floor, still shaken by the memory of Dean's attack on the Impala.

A silent curse rang out in Dean as he interpreted his brother's words. '_Sam knows_,' Dean rationalized until he looked to Sam, saw the way his brother wouldn't meet his eyes, the way Sam's shoulders hunched. '_No, worse, Sam saw what I did to the Impala_.' Looking to the right, distancing himself as far away from Sam as he could without crawling from the couch, Dean sat in silence, ashamed, feeling painfully vulnerable, bereft of his best, thickest shields.

As silence oppressed the very air in the room, Sam cast a lowered glance to Dean. Expecting to see defiance, anger, denial, _life_ in his brother's heated glare, it felt so much worse to find Dean's eyes were not even upon him, that instead of retaliation there was defeat rolling off of his brother. Clearing his throat, Sam quietly revealed, his tone sarcastically grave and hesitant, "You know, I hated to say something earlier but…that trunk, it was all wrong." Dean's reaction was slight, a lessening of the tension in his shoulders, a dropping of his head an inch, a small snort but it heartened Sam, encouraged him to continue. "I mean, I could tell you thought it was the right one but me…I didn't like it." Then Dean's head turned, his too dull eyes were turning up to Sam's encouraging Sam to let his words become more mockingly brazen, "Didn't like it right from the start, actually, even before you attached it. Knew it the second I saw it in the back of Bobby's truck…it was just…wrong."

Quiet laughter escaped Dean as he shook his head, "You are so weird!" he lovingly accused, snaking his hand up to ruffle Sam's hair fondly, causing a relieved smile to blossom on his little brother's worried countenance. Leaning back heavily on the couch, Dean let his eyes rest on Sam. "Thanks…" he smirked before he completed his sentence, "for not telling me that earlier. Would have hurt my feelings."

"Sure, you know I'm all about sparing your feelings," Sam's self disgust creeping into his tone as he accepted the blame for his brother's abusive release. "Dean, I didn't mean to push…"

"Yeah, you did." Dean cut in, his voice harsher then he intended. Looking away, Dean sighed before focusing again on Sam's tortured eyes, but no words came to make things better. It was supposed to be easier than this, him and Sam being together, they did this better, had done it better, before they hooked up with Dad, before Dad died. It was a blow to Dean, this struggle. He had thought the hard part was coming to grips with the certainty that he still belonged at Sam's side. But now figuring how to be there was proving difficult, it was like, whether he and Sam knew it or not, Dad had been between them, gluing them together, allowing their ragged edges to mesh together. But now that glue was gone, that cushion missing, leaving them grinding against each other, _hurting_ each other.

Sam's next acknowledgment did little to ease Dean's pain. "You're right. I pushed, meant to push. I just wanted…" Sam bit down on his lip, letting his eyes drop to his hands, unable to voice what he wanted, knowing it was impossible for Dean to grant. Things were changed, forever. There was no going back.

"I have to deal with things in my own way, Sam," Dean quietly announced, knowing it was not what Sam wanted to hear, wasn't even what he wanted to be saying, but it was the truth and Sam deserved to hear it. To hear what small bit of truth he could speak.

"I know you do," Sam drawled, his breath hitching slightly as he faced Dean. His eyes reaching out to Dean, Sam wanted to clasp onto his brother, to find someway to bind Dean to him irrevocable. "But not like this Dean," Sam breathlessly implored, shaking head slightly, "not in ways that _hurt_ you," unmindful of the tear that tracked down his cheek.

"Sammy it wasn't intentional…" Dean deflected gently.

"And it wasn't unintentional either," Sam refuted unflinchingly, pulling off the gloves, ready to wage any war he had to in order to keep his brother with him, safe. Dean swallowed but made no dispute and that somehow made it worse, made Sam's statement more true, scared Sam to his core, spurred Sam to speak boldly. "I'm not going to stand by and let you get hurt Dean, not by your own actions or someone else's…even my own. I'll…I'll try and back off, give you space to deal with this…but I'm not going away Dean and I'm not going to turn a blind eye to your pain. **Don't ask me to**."

"Here you go," Bobby said, startling Sam and Dean, as he sat down two plates, each sporting a burger, onto the small table in front of the couch. "Soda to drink?" he asked his eyes flickering to each of the Winchesters.

"Yeah," came the chorus from the brothers. Bobby shook his head as Sam and Dean seemed oblivious to how special that in synch thing that they had was, making him doubt his earlier optimistic statement to Clint. But as he turned around to head back into the kitchen and retrieve the drinks, he caught the smirk that leap across the distance between the two brothers. Yeah, they weren't that oblivious.

Repositioning himself on the couch to face forward, Sam snagged both plates and handed one to Dean before the older man could make the painful move to retrieve the plate. Picking up his own burger, Sam couldn't keep his eyes from flickering to his brother, his jaw clenching as he saw the wince that crossed Dean's features when he picked up his burger with his bandaged hand. "So…your hands…" Sam began, wondering if Dean would make this information as hard to learn as he had the ripped stitches.

"Got a close up inspection of the shoulder of the road," Dean nonchalantly revealed, not willing to let this play out like another round of twenty questions. As alarm settled on Sam's face, Dean smirked, hoping to ease his brother's worry, "I learned 2 things: Lots of beer bottles get tossed out windows around here and this county apparently doesn't have a litter control committee."

Without meaning to, Sam found his eyes flickering to Dean's knees, knowing that the dark spots he had previously catalogued as dirt stains were something more sinister. "Knees, too?"

"No, I was out there doing hand stands, Sammy?" Dean shot back, their eyes clashing a moment before chuckles burst from them. "Dude, I think you need to confess how many frat parties you overindulged in, little brother, cause something fried your brain."

"Being around you, that's what fried my brain," Sam countered, basking in the abuse only his brother could mold into something even more binding that a good clinging hug.

Returning with a tray of four drinks, Bobby set the tray down and claimed a chair to the right of the couch. A moment later Clint emerged from the kitchen carrying two plates, one of which he passed to Bobby before he sank down into the chair across from the couch.

The doctor smiled at Dean, making Dean's brow scrunch up in wonder and warning. Swallowing, Clint taunted, "So, Bobby told me you are scared of swans."

"What?!" Sam scoffed with laughter, looking at Dean as his older brother squirmed in his seat.

"Bobby," Dean lowly growled, shooting a glare to the mechanic and sometimes hunter.

"Oh, it was too good of a story to keep to myself. A big bad Winchester running away from a bird," Bobby snorted.

"A big freakin' evil prehistoric bird! Offspring to a pterodactyl," Dean defended heatedly, lancing his look into Clint who was laughing out loud.

"Dean, a pterodactyl's a reptile…"Sam interjected, his mirth spilling from his voice.

"Shut up!" Dean snapped, pointing to Bobby, "You saw that thing! It attacked me…took a chunk of flesh from my leg!"

"I hear the females dominate their mates, must have been love at first sight for her," Clint mocked straight faced, earning laughter from Sam and Bobby.

Bobby's laughed harder, his words difficult to understand but still clear enough for his audience, "He started yelling, kill it, kill it, while he's scrambling backwards on the ground, kicking at it."

"It was possessed," Dean insisted above the laughter.

"Had to be…to think you tasted good," Sam chided, smiling wider at his brother's burning glare.

"Fine, pick on the injured guy but who saved your butt from that mail order bride," Dean countered, leveling his gaze at Bobby, enjoying the red hue that sprang to the older man's cheeks.

"Mail order bride?" Clint scoffed, "And here I thought you were saving up to buy a new tow truck."

"She wasn't no mail order bride!"

"Right," Dean agreed before he smiled fiendishly, "**Internet **order bride. So what was her name again, Hilda?"

"I didn't order her!" Bobby's voice began to rattle off the rafters.

"Right," Dean agreed again, nodding his head before he snapped his fingers, "No, I got it! Her name was Mildred and you just put a down payment on her."

"I gave to a charity! It wasn't a down payment!" Bobby growled back, slamming his burger, plate and all onto the table.

"One man's charity is another man's human trafficking," Dean smiled widely but as Bobby's look darkened, Dean raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, don't get mad at me for your screw up. And you should be thanking me…if I wasn't here to protect you from her…we would have found pieces of you in your junkyard…all over your junkyard. Man, the look on your face when she showed up at the door and landed that kiss on you right from the git go," Dean chuckled, "That was priceless, dude. Totally priceless."

Bobby couldn't help but chuckle as he sank back into his chair, "No, the price was your silence. You made me put in that new stereo system in the Impala and now you sell me out."

To Dean's surprise, his brother's voice spoke up to defend him, "Maybe you didn't notice but the stereo system in the Impala's shot, Bobby. You should have negotiated a new deal."

"Ganging up on me, huh?" Bobby stewed before turning to Clint. "And you, you're supposed to stick up for me, be my ally."

"Yeah, right, like you were for me back in that bar in Kentucky," Clint snorted before he turned to his willing audience of Sam and Dean. "One of his junk cars lets us sit and.."

"Junk cars!" Bobby exclaimed, but Clint barely noticed the interruption as he dove into his story.

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It was dark when the stories wound down, when the laughter faded to smiles, when sleep overtook Dean and he slumped against Sam, his head coming to rest on his brother's shoulder. Even after Bobby and Clint moved into the other room to continue their conversation, Sam found he didn't want to move, didn't want to sever the connection with Dean, couldn't fight the desire to tenderly wrap his hand around the side of his brother's neck. When Clint walked back into the room, a spectator to the tenderness usually not displayed or even acted upon, Sam didn't pull his hand away, refused to feel shame at caring about his brother. But there was no scoffing in the other man's eyes, instead a warm smile turned up Clint's lips.

Quietly Clint assessed, "When it came to getting a brother, both of you guys sure lucked out."

Sam's reply was instantaneous, his eyes on Dean's lax face pressed against his shoulder, "I did, that's for sure," his love unmasked.

"You want help getting him to bed," Clint offered, knowing first hand the damage hidden under his shirt that Dean wore, that gentle handling was required.

"No, I got him," Sam countered briskly, frustrated at the man's kindness that was now forcing him to move, to relinquish Dean to a bed instead of his side. Slipping his right arm around Dean's back and his left arm under Dean's knees, Sam gained his feet, his brother held securely in his arms. At a mumble from Dean and a toss of his brother's head, Sam murmured, "Easy, Dean. I got ya." Settling his face against Sam's shoulder, Dean fell silent, at ease, assured that he was safe, protected, with Sam.

Shamed at his doubt that Sam would be gentle with his brother, Clint slipped ahead of Sam and turned on the bedroom light and pulled down the covers of the bed. Stepping back, he watched, his heart in his throat, as Sam carefully laid his brother on the bed, tenderly settled Dean's head onto the pillow, placed the limp hand that hung over the bed onto the sleeping man's chest, relinquished his grip on the hand only after he had given it a reassuring squeeze. When Sam looked over his shoulder at him, Clint felt like he should apologize for being there, for intruding where he had no right to be, knowing that for all he had done today for Dean it still didn't earn him the right to stand there watching them, envying them their bond. "I'll get his shoes off," he said, starting to move toward the end of the bed but Sam's strong hand gripped his arm, stopped his motion at the gate.

"I got it," Sam gruffly announced, his hand tightening on the doctor's arm, unwilling to let this stranger show kindness to Dean, not when he was there, not when he could do that for his brother.

"Sorry…sometimes I take the doctor routine too far," Clint apologized, relieved when Sam's grimace faded and the younger man released his arm.

Running a hand through his hair, Sam stammered, knowing that the doctor only meant to help, that the man wasn't attempting to take Sam's place in Dean's life, couldn't even if he wanted to. "No…I'm sorry. I…it's just…"

A gentle smile turned up Clint's lips. "Hey, he's your brother and you're as protective of him as he is of you. I get it, Sam. No need to apologize."

"Clint, thank you for taking care of him," Sam earnestly bade, his eyes telling the older man how seriously he took the debt he owed to him for his kindness.

Clint shrugged, "I was just glad I was there at the right time, right place."

Sam looked to Dean, his voice hoarse as he replied, "Me too," before he forced himself to again turn to Clint.

Knowing that Sam's attention could not endure straying from his brother for much longer, Clint made his goodbye. "I'll leave my phone number on the table, any problems or even any questions, call me. And if down the road, you need a country doctor, you just call me up, alright?"

With a shy smile, Sam bade, "Yeah, thanks" and watched the doctor slip quietly from the room. Moving to the end of the bed, Sam deftly undid the laces on his brother's shoes and slipped first one and then the other shoe from his brother's feet. With only a moment's hesitation, Sam pulled the covers over a fully dressed Dean, knowing that his brother would stubbornly prefer sleeping in his clothing rather than being humiliated with the thought that his little brother had undressed him. Winchester pride, it was always at full strength even when nothing else was.

Settling the covers just under Dean's chin, Sam stood there, watching his brother breathe, discerning that no pain marred his face, that no specter haunted his sleep. "Thanks for coming back, Dean," Sam gratefully murmured, letting his fingers skim over his brother's spiked hair before he left the room.

TBC

Thanks for reading!

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.


	4. Chapter 4

Moonlight

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

Author's Note: After much delay, here's the end to this tale!

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Chapter 4

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The quiet was breaking Sam. The suffocating quiet that permeated the moonlit bedroom he had been allotted, the bedroom that once belonged to Bobby's youngest son. A bedroom that was like a shrine to the son Bobby rarely spoke of, that still sported posters on the walls of rock bands, whose dresser was still littered with crumpled up movie tickets, a pocketknife and a wrench. Preserved as if Bobby expected his son to show up, wanting to reclaim the room, anxious to play the part of son again. The room was a lie, a lie Sam had sought after his whole life, the sham of normalcy, of some fairytale happiness that he been denied as a child.

It was a bitter shock, this foray into normal, this 'gift' of delusion. He had his own room, his own _bedroom_ in an honest to goodness _home. _It was what he had always yearned for growing up, fought for, cursed his father for not providing to him, to Dean. A place to belong, a place of separation, a place of identity that was his alone. And now he had it, on a silver platter, for as long as he wanted it, needed it. Except now he didn't want it, at all. Not now! Not when it separated him from what he needed most, _who_ he needed most.

That first night, as he and Dean stumbled into Bobby's house, Dean barely on his feet but too stubborn to accept Sam's aid, and Sam lost amid a torrent of emotions, Bobby had assigned Dean his eldest son's room and Sam his younger son's room. At Bobby's words, something had flickered in Sam, amid his grief, piercing the numbness that he had instinctively tried to cocoon around himself. Unwilling or unable to decipher what that something was, Sam snuffed it out like he was struggling to do to all his other emotions.

However, nothing could suppress the swell of emotions that settled in his chest when he had crossed over his assigned bedroom's threshold. With painful clarity he knew it was wrong, all wrong. There was only one bed and Dean was not at his heels, would not be sharing the room with him, was sequestered down the hall in another room, another brother's room, out of his sight and out of his reach. Sam found he couldn't breathe, couldn't remember _how_ to breathe, blindly he had reached out to grip the doorframe tightly, anchoring himself, steeling himself. And in that moment, he knew that the last thing he could endure was being apart from Dean, being separated from the only family he had left, cut off from the one person that had ever made him feel secure in a world of monsters. A hatred for Bobby sprang to life, because he had immortalized his sons' rooms, because he had not turned the rooms into research areas like he had the rest of the house, because he had offered them his hospitality.

Almost convincing himself to refuse Bobby's hospitality, to insist that he and Dean head to a motel, Sam envisioned gripping Dean by the arm, steering him out to the car…and then it hit him…they had no car, no escape. So he had accepted the hospitality like it was a death sentence, sank down on the bed, pulled the covers up, and taken in the room's contents from his prone position. But sleep had not come to him, not that first night, nor hardly the nights to follow, not in that bedroom, not amid the trappings of normal, not with the silence eating away at his sanity.

No, sleep, peace, had only come to him in the bedroom down the hall, sitting in a hardwood chair, hovering beside the center of his universe, his eyes fixed on the slack, too pale features of his brother. His presence unmarked, Sam had gently brushed his fingers over his brother's cut forehead. Had boldly slipped his hand into his lax brother's hand, squeezed the callused, strong hand, assured that the medication he had demanded Dean take would allow him that liberty without the threat that Dean would wake up. Then, like some thief in the night, Sam melted away by morning, leaving behind no traces that he had been there, had clung desperately to the sight of his brother, had found comfort at each breath Dean took, his grief succored at the tangible feel of his brother's hand in his.

For three nights Sam sat at his brother's side, the connection allowing him to weave his threadbare nerves back together even as he fortified himself against the pain the daylight brought. For in the light, Dean did not welcome his presence, unknowingly taking back what Sam stole from him amid the darkness. On the forth night, when Dean had stopped taking his medication, refused to meld into unconsciousness, to accept any reprieve from his pain, Dean had unsuspectingly severed another tendril of their connection, sentencing Sam to the quiet torment of his own bedroom for the night…for the nights to come…seemingly for eternity.

And it had hurt Sam…worse than any words Dean would have said, any action he would have consciously made. Dean couldn't see that though, didn't _want_ to see it, Sam's pain, Sam's yearning look as he watched Dean head to bed, didn't imagine the way Sam flinched at the sound of the click of the door shutting out the hallway light, shutting him out. Dean might just as well have slammed the door and turned a lock in place. It was all the same. Another wall, another barrier, another 'keep out and stay out' sign, more bitter evidence that Sam was losing his brother.

But this night, Sam's resolve to heed his brother's obvious wishes to be alone was crumbling in boulders and whole walls. The silence was oppressive, the need to slip from the room burned just as brightly as it had those first three nights after his father had died. Once again his eyes stung in the moonlit room, vainly searching across the dark expansion for the sight of Dean sleeping in another bed. His ears rang in protest of the silence, pining for the sounds that he had gone to sleep with for the past year now painfully absent. There was no hum of an air-conditioner or a heater, no sounds of cars driving by, no muffled voices from outside a motel room. But all those sounds had always played backup to the song that fed Sam's soul, night after night, the song that was Dean.

Dean radiated live energy, his coiled alertness always just under the surface of sleep, leaving him poised to react at the first hint of danger. But it wasn't his brother's strength and protection Sam craved, not tonight, not the nights prior. Sam's needs were simpler, more basic. He just wanted to hear the rhythmic lullaby of his brother's breath in the quiet night, the sound that could steady his racing heartbeat after his nightmares, had always been able to loll him to sleep amid his fears, that was his irrefutable _proof_ that Dean wasn't gone. His father was gone but Dean wasn't.

Sam fought to steady his own breathing. The aching absence of Dean's presence was choking him, killing him and none of his self disgust at his weakness was dislodging the panic, the pain he felt. Pushing back the covers, he came to his feet quickly, his mind made up, his incriminations shoved aside leaving him only with the need to see Dean. Padding barefooted across the room, he headed out the bedroom door.

Though the hallway in Bobby's house was pitch black, Sam knew the passageway blindfolded, had traversed the corridor often enough in the daytime and the nighttime to know how to negotiate it without incident. And then he was at his destination. With quiet motions, he turned the door knob and pushed the door open. It was only when his eyes fell on Dean sprawled out on the bed, moonlight illuminating his face, that Sam found the ability to breathe again, the desire to breathe again. Like they had for the past week, tears of relief sprang to Sam's eyes at the sight of his brother. Dean wasn't dead, his brother wasn't dead.

Leaning against the doorframe, Sam recalled too sharply doing the same thing in the hospital, watching as the doctor shocked his brother's body, again and again and again, the merciless sound of the heart monitors flat lining slicing across his soul. And all he had been able to do was stand there, no, _lean_ there against the doorframe, his legs too weak to support him, his soul nearly flickering out. Able to do nothing but pray, plead, scream '_No! Don't take him away from me! Do anything but that! **Anything**!_'

Trembling at the memories, Sam slipped into his brother's room and came to stand beside Dean's head, his eyes on the features he knew so well. It felt like that first night at Bobby's all over again, his heart in his throat, humbled by the gift of his brother's breath slowly breaking the silence he had come to hate. But this night was different. Tonight Dean skimmed the surface of unconsciousness, the doctor's medication mostly having lost its hold over him by now. Sam knew that, if he wasn't careful, his presence would penetrate his brother's awareness, would startle Dean awake and rob his brother of his much needed sleep. So it was with utter silence that Sam sank, not into the chair on the other side of the bed but onto the floor beside Dean's bed, his back resting against the wall, his eyes fixed on Dean's moonlit face.

Inexplicably Sam felt like he was again watching over a comatose Dean, a Dean he couldn't touch. A Dean he didn't _dare _touch, not when he was terrified that he would hurt Dean, that he would clumsily dislodge the medical equipment that was keeping his brother alive, that his cursed presence would sever the gossamer thread to life that Dean clung to however feebly.

Before logic could stay his hand, before compassion could deter his actions, before he could shut down his fears, Sam lifted his trembling hand toward his brother's as it dangled over the side of the bed. Slipping his hand gently into Dean's, Sam drew in a sharp breath as the older man stirred slightly at the contact.

Stilling a moment later, Dean did not awaken, made no move to disengage his hand from his brother's. Dean's subconscious reaction heartened Sam, told him that as much as Dean was pulling away from him, on some deeper level, Dean still needed him to be there with him, still _wanted_ his brother with him. Freed of some of the burden he bore, Sam smiled, leaned back against the wall, careful to not break the physical connection with his brother, and promptly fell asleep.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Jolting awake, his heart pounding in his ears, Sam was uncertain what had woken him or where he was. As the moonlit room came into focus, he remembered at least where he was: Bobby's house, Dean's room, middle of the night, a reprieve from the silence. His head snapped to his brother when he heard a low, mournful sound of sorrow, a sound that sliced deftly into his heart. '_Dean!_' Surging to his feet, Sam instantly stepped to the bedside.

When Sam saw his brother, a matching moan of despair nearly escaped him. Harsh breaths rattled through the sleeping man's chest, Dean's sweat soaked head tossed from side to side and anguish marred the handsome face. Needing to dissipate whatever torment haunted his brother's sleep, Sam, swallowing down the anguish he felt at his brother's pain, timidly reached for Dean's right cheek. Surprise morphed into shaking fear when the feather light touch of his fingers on Dean's face didn't generate a reaction from his brother.

Settling his now trembling hand against his brother's flushed cheek, Sam leaned down and gently beckoned, "Dean?" the one word filled with fear and pleading. Almost instantly Sam's wrist was crushed in a brutal grip and a hand latched onto his throat. Sam responded to the violence with a _smile_, relieved, even happy at his brother's act of offensive defense. A fighting Dean he knew what to do with, a submissive, unresponsive Dean…that broke him in every conceivable way possible. But when recognition didn't flicker in Dean's expression, worry diminished Sam's smile. "You alright?" Sam asked, his brother's stranglehold making his voice husky and low but doing nothing to temper his concern.

Blinking away sleep and mentally disengaging from the horrific lingering imprints of his nightmare, Dean tried to get his eyesight to penetrate the darkness which shrouded his "visitor". Releasing his prey from his brutal hold, Dean hazarded, "Sam?" squinting into the inky blackness.

Slipping into the moonlight, Sam claimed a seat on the side of Dean's bed and saw some of the tension ease from Dean's body. Adopting one of his brother's tactics, Sam quirked, hoping to mask his feelings which were running too close to the surface for even his comfort, "Yeah, you know, Sam, your brother," his voice hoarse, tremulous for reasons that had nothing to do with his throat's mistreatment.

With a grimace of pain, Dean scooted up to lean against the headboard and rubbed the fingers of his hand over his burning, tired eyes. Reclaiming his footing in reality, Dean, his brow furrowed, met his brother's eyes brimming with worry that even the little light in the room could not conceal. "Sam? You mean my brother that has a bed _next door_. That Sam?" Dean lobbed back lightly, his eyebrow raised questioningly.

His eyes never leaving his brother's, Sam quietly answered the question he knew Dean was leveling at him. "Couldn't sleep," ill-equipped to lie to Dean, not now, not here, not when so much already separated them.

"Sorry…" Dean breathed in anguish, seemingly apologizing for having found sleep himself, even if it was plagued by nightmares.

Amazed at his brother's compassion for him, his little brother, even when Dean was in such turmoil himself, Sam shook his head. '_But this isn't about me, Dean. I won't let you make it about me. It's about you.'_ "You were having a nightmare," Sam stated gently, fulfilling his early pledge by refusing to turn a blind eye to his brother's pain. Bracing himself for the spectrum of Dean's reaction from some smart aleck comeback to an angry retort, Sam knew he would willingly endure either one if it had the power to lessen the burden that overshadowed the light in his brother's eyes.

But Dean did not respond with angry words or glib comebacks. Instead, for the second time that night, silence cut deep furrows into Sam. Watching Dean's jaw clench, his eyes drop to the worn blanket pooled in his lap, Sam felt his own jaw clench, not in anger but despair as a revelation nearly overwhelmed him.

The silence, it had always hurt him the most, scared him the most, not the silence of a night in a solitary bedroom but Dean's silence. The severing silence that fell when he had told Dean he was leaving for college, the choking silence after his murderous actions in that asylum, the devastating silence in Dean's hospital room, the only sound having been made _for_ _Dean_, the breath that wasn't his, wasn't his doing, maybe wasn't even his idea. And now there was the unrelenting silence Dean had been hiding behind since their father's death,

It felt like a punishment, Dean's silence, a punishment that Sam was crumbling under, his earlier words to Dean taking on more meaning. '_I mean this strong silent thing of yours, its crap. I'm over it._' Now Sam knew what lay under the words he spoke, the desperation, the pain, the suffocating dread. '…_this strong silent thing of yours, I hate it, I can't bear it, it's killing me, it's like I need to get out the mystical talking hands again just to talk to you, to get you to talk to me, to 'feel' like you're still here, that you're not gone.'_

Silence, it was the worst of everything. All the words Dean didn't say, wouldn't say, couldn't say. It was shutting Sam out better than anything else, hurting him more than Dean's words of accusation of caring about their father's wishes far too little and far too late. It was cutting Sam off from who Dean was, what Dean was, what they were together. Irrefutably it was destroying what Sam would give his life to protect: Dean, always Dean, forever Dean. Dean wasn't supposed to be silent, or still, or broken. Ever. And yet he had been and Sam was so afraid that he would be again that it made every breath burn in his throat.

Raging against anything that dared to come between him and Dean, that would steal his brother from him, Sam broke the quiet abyss that was tearing them apart little by little. "I want you to be you, Dean. Not Dad," he softly confessed, pleading for his brother to understand his words, to know the truth of them, hard pressed to not reach his hand out and initiate some physical link to Dean. If possible, Dean's jaw clenched harder and his head bowed further down, bricking up the wall between them, higher, thicker.

His breath nearly hitching in his throat, Sam swallowed before he spoke again, the emotional edge he was balanced on evident by the quiver in his voice, by the pain in his eyes that couldn't tear their focus from Dean. "I need my brother right now. He's a jerk sometimes," and Sam forced a tired snort from his constricted throat, "wouldn't know a good song if it bit him… but I miss him right now so bad it _hurts_. See he's been my anchor my whole life. He thinks he's supposed to be my big bad protector but really I just need him to be my best friend, to let me have a place at his shoulder, you know. Not behind him, not sheltered but right there in the thick of it _beside him_. It's what I grew up fantasizing about. Getting the chance to be worthy to be his partner, reassured that, if I had to take on every evil thing Dad ever talked about, at least I would do it with him, that we would do it **together**." When Dean's head slowly came up, his pained eyes meeting Sam's, Sam knew that the wall was still there, still intact, besieged, under attack, but still standing.

Drawing in a shaky breath, Sam knew in his gut that he was holding onto his connection with Dean by the barest of threads. "And Dad being gone, it doesn't change who I need you to be, want you to be, Dean," he declared, resolve and truth weaved in every word.

Dean found that he didn't doubt his brother's words, his pledge, his desires. But Sam didn't know, didn't understand, wasn't _supposed_ to understand what stood between them, hidden, concealed, buried. It was Dean's to bear, this guilt, this weight, this duty, his father's sacrifice, his father's last confession, his father's last order, his father's last words to him…ever. "Sam, with Dad gone I have other responsibilities…" Dean gently offered what truth he could, what words he could choke out, trying to mold lies into something he could live with…if only for the moment.

Sam interrupted Dean's denials firmly, his eyes lancing into Dean's in desperation, "**We** have other responsibilities, Dean. We're in this together, as brothers, as partners. I protect you, you protect me. If you risk your life, then I risk mine. If something wants to hurt you, it has to go through me first. It's the way things should have played out from the start after Stanford but I…I was just so used to you protecting me, comfortable with it, that I let you do it. I let you shove me out of harm's way as you took on Wendigos and Raw Heads and everything else that came down the pike, **alone**. And I almost _lost_ you Dean," Sam choked on the last sentence, drowning in remembered terror, of loss so narrowly avoided that he had begun stumbling down the dark passages of grief.

Coming off of the bed, Sam crossed to the window, his back to Dean, his hand wiping away tears as his unfocused eyes stared at the outside world. He could stop there, could _hope_ those words were enough, that they would save Dean, would keep Dean with him. '_But only if Dean wants to be saved…wants to stay with me._' And the doubt that sank into Sam's heart felt like a harpoon's shaft, immovable, vast, fatal. He couldn't let his brother's fate lay in the careless hands of hope, he hadn't when Dean had had his heart attack, hadn't wanted to when Dean lay comatose and Sam refused to now, not when Dean's soul lay ravaged, breaking, flickering against the gales of sorrow, anger, guilt and pain.

Turning around, his face in shadows, Sam clearly saw the torment in Dean's pale face, could feel the anguish, the guilt, the sense of worthlessness that radiated from the green eyes that he knew so well. "I don't want Dad to be dead. God knows, I wish Dad wasn't dead _but I don't wish it was you, Dean_. Not for a second. Please tell me you don't think that I…" but a small sound of anguish escaped Dean, a precursor to something Sam hadn't ever witnessed in his brother. It told Sam all he needed to know and more than he ever wanted to know. Sam's voice was breathless in horror and disbelief, his body shaking as the merciless truth hit home, "You think that, don't you?! That I think you should be dead and Dad alive?! I don't Dean, I swear I don't."

Dean couldn't bear hearing Sam's words, winced at the compassion in Sam's voice, compassion for him, _love _for him. It was killing him! He was so unworthy…Sam should see that, should know that, apparently had to be shown that. Dean's voice was hoarse, bitter, brittle when he spoke, his eyes haunted, pained, lost. "Sam, miracles in our lives…..they don't come with no strings attached."

Sam's worst fears were confirmed; Dean was bearing the guilt that wasn't his to bear. "Don't Dean," he pleaded, shaking his head, not wanting Dean to say the words, not even wanting his brother to _think_ along those lines.

But Dean was determined that Sam see the light, see what he had cost him, _who_ he had cost him, to know the worst of it. And then Sam would give him what he deserved, even what he craved, Sam's anger, his hatred, his absence, everything that had the power to wound Dean the deepest. Dean called it all down upon his head, upon his soul. It was the least he deserved.

Forcing the words out, steady, resolved, Dean, tracking Sam's every reaction, summoned the reckoning he knew awaited him, "It's what neither one of us wants to say, wants to face. I was dying Sam, a reaper had my number." Swallowing, Dean mourned the imminent loss of everything he and Sam had between them and would never have again. "Dad was fine, was up and around…." A single tear spilled down Dean's cheek, unchecked, unnoted. "I don't know…if he …"

Taking two steps back towards the bed, Sam broke into Dean's words, unable to bear his brother's pain, to let guilt poison the strongest person he knew. "He _loved_ you Dean. He risked his life for strangers! Do you actually think he'd do less for you?"

"Risk?! This was sacrifice, Sam!" Dean growled, shoving the comforter off of him and surging from the bed. Pain awaken in his chest, leaving Dean gulping in a sharp intake of air, his hand flying up to brace the new stitches decorating his chest as the world around him tilted. Stumbling backwards, his back impacted with the wall, his legs crumbling under him.

Leaping across the space that separated him from his brother, Sam gripped onto his brother's shoulders and pinned Dean to the wall, halting the injured man's harsh descent to the floor. It left nothing standing between the two brothers but their besieged emotional fortifications. His eyes fixed on Dean's anguished gaze, his breath ghosting over his brother's face, Sam softly but insistently expressed, "Dad was willing to sacrifice himself to kill what murdered Mom….deep down, we both knew that. But what he was _never_ willing to sacrifice, for _any_ cost, was you, Dean! He told us that, said Mom's death almost killed him, that he couldn't watch his children die, _wouldn't_ watch us die. He _couldn't_ watch you die, Dean, not if there was _any_ way he could save you."

"So what, it's OK that he's dead!?" Dean said darkly, daring Sam to lie, to lie to his face, his hands fisted in his brother's shirt, wanting to draw Sam close, needing to push him away, stalled motionlessly in between both desires.

"No, it's not Ok he's dead…" Sam confessed, his voice shaking, choked. Seeing the recoil in the green eyes, the desire to slip away from him, Sam gripped tighter to Dean, pulled his brother closer. "But there's no better reason for him to die than for you, to save you. And Dad believed that, would never regret the decision he made to save you, **no matter the cost of that decision**."

"Sam," Dean pleaded brokenly, walls crumbling, wounds bared to the bone, hurt by the truth of the words even as they soothed some of the searing pain in his soul. As he slid down the wall, Sam willingly went down with him, their respective holds on each other never breaking.

Tenderly wrapping his right hand around the side of Dean's neck, Sam declared, kneeling before Dean, his eyes meeting his brother's, "Dean, I don't regret his decision…and _neither should you_. He did it to save you." Seeing a flare of guilt darken Dean's eyes, Sam added softly, "And he also did it for me because… I need you Dean. Dad knew that."

"You would have had Dad, Sammy," Dean protested, his voice cracking but he didn't allow himself to retreat from whatever emotion would flicker in his brother's eyes, whatever deserved condemnation Sam would level at him. "You could have Dad here with you now." Dean knew that he should release his grip on Sam. Should, in action, show Sam that he was strong enough to face the truth, prove to Sam that he didn't need to shield the truth from him. But Dean couldn't force his hands to loosen, to let Sam's shirt slip from his grasp, to let _Sam_ slip from him.

Sam's eyes dropped a moment, fearing that the truth he next spoke might open more wounds, would incite his brother's protective instincts to flare to live, that Dean would take his father's side …and not his. Shaking his head and gathering his courage, Sam raised his head and revealed, his voice breathless, "It wouldn't have been enough."

"Sam…you don't have to …" Dean began to object, instead of releasing Sam he gripped tighter to his brother's shirt, grateful for Sam's lie but unwilling to let his brother bare the weight of that sin on his soul just to spare his big brother's feelings. The fate of Sam's soul came before Dean's, always had, always would.

Sam softly insisted over his brother's protest as he tightened his hold on Dean's neck,_ "He_ just wouldn't have been enough, Dean, not if you had died." His burning eyes fixed on Dean, desperately needing the other man to accept what he was saying, what he was feeling. "By saving you…Dad saved me." Taking a shuddering breath, Sam struggled to get his emotions locked away, to express what was in his heart, had always been in his heart like a dirty little secret he had hid from the light, hid from his father but should have never hid from Dean.

Selflessly, Sam dropped his barriers, knowing that the risk of vulnerability, the sacrifice of the walls to his inner sanctuary were worth it, Dean was worth it. "He didn't raise me, _you did_, Dean," Sam said softly, without accusation but with love for his brother. "He didn't teach me how to tie my shoes or shave or drive, you did. He didn't sit up with me all night after I had another nightmare about Jess, or come get me when the Benders had me, you did. And he didn't answer my damn phone call when I said you had a heart attack…" the words turned accusing, tortured as they ripped from him, leaving him gasping, struggling to get out the rest amid the lump in his throat, "…that you were _dying! He_ didn't knock on my door, stumble into the room and make jokes…willing to do whatever it took to calm my fears…_you did_."

Touched by his brother's devotion, by his appreciation, Dean gave a choking, "Sam…" as his eyes filled with tears. He had always been honored to do those things for Sam. Glad that he got to do them, maybe even glad he got to do them _instead_ of their father.

Swallowing, Sam dropped his hands from Dean and sat back on his hunches, resolve settling onto his features. "You want me to say that it's wrong that you're alive. Well, I can't say that, Dean. I wouldn't mean it, anymore than Dad would. He loved you Dean. Loved you! Loved you more than his own life and I _know _the last thing he'd ever want is for you to be hurt by his choice, by his love for you. He'd want you to live, to be happy, to enjoy the gift he gave you."

His brother's words washed over Dean, soothing his wounded soul, making the hurt lessen, the guilt recede slightly. And then his father's words replayed in his head, "Don't be scared, Dean," words that now, in retrospect, took on another meaning, left Dean able to consider the notion that Sam was right. His father did not want him hurt by his choice, hadn't been scared to trade fates with his son, instead, was at peace with that choice, relieved even. That his father had said those words, used that soothing tone, bestowed that loving look to convey what he couldn't, wouldn't spell out…that Dean should be at peace with his choice, to not be scared at what lay ahead…nor what had fallen behind.

Unsure how to interpret his brother's silence, Sam offered up with a shaky laugh, "I mean, you saw how testy Dad got when you didn't keep the Impala, his gift to you _ten years_ _ago_, spit shined and in top form. Boy would he be pissed at you for treating his latest gift so crappy…like you didn't even value it."

A sound of half laughter and half sob came from Dean as he bowed his head. Let it up to Sammy to put things into a whole new perspective, warped perspective but then again wasn't that the only perspective Winchesters ever understood. Drawing his knees up to his chest, Dean leaned his head back against the wall and drew in a wobbly breath as he looked to his life line, his anchor amid the worst storm he had ever weathered.

Dean looked so vulnerable, so young, so _lost_ sitting on the floor, moonlight casting a fragile light over him. "I'm scared, Dean," Sam quietly confessed, as Dean's eyes held his, but unlike a thousand times before, no reassurances came from his older brother, painfully making Sam's statement truer. "I'm just so scared for you, scared that you're going to shut me out, going to self destruct, that you're going to leave me. I've dealt with a lot but you being gone, I …I can't take that Dean. You crying, you hurting, you feeling, that I can deal with, but not you gone, never that."

Dean sighed, "I'm not gone, Sammy," his tone leaving Sam in doubt whether it was regret or resolve his brother was emanating.

"But you're not _here_ either," Sam countered with desperation, torn apart that he could see Dean, could touch Dean, but couldn't _have_ him, not the brother he knew, not the person who had always embodied the essence of home, not the other part of his soul. "I need my brother and he's not here. Bring him back, Dean. Please just be him again."

Sam's plea pierced through Dean's wall that served to bottle up his agony instead of ward against it, flew straight into his brotherly heart. Faltering, Dean stammered, "Sam, I can't just ….." ashamed that he was failing Sam, devastated that he was breaking his last promise to his father to take care of Sammy, wishing he could choke out a lie, a 'I'm good, Sammy.' But for all the lies he had told in his life, he couldn't stomach to make any false promises, not to Sam, never to Sam.

Seeing the cost his demand was exacting on Dean, the pain, the defeat that was coiled in his brother's every breath, Sam gently said, praying to assuage the crushing weight he had put upon his brother's already bowed shoulders, "It's alright, Dean. I can wait. I'm not going anywhere."

Surprise and relief shone in Dean's eyes as if he had been given a gift vainly hoped for but rarely granted. His quiet, nearly inaudibly reply confirmed it. "Dad never waited."

Sam took in a sharp intake of air and felt his eyes burn. '_How could I have not seen the faults in Dean's relationship with Dad?! Seen the pain Dean felt, the pain Dad had a way of inflicting on both of his sons?!' _The answer was so clear, now, when he could do nothing to mend what was broken._ 'I was too busy being jealous of Dean, of the 'good job son' praise he earned, the responsibilities he was granted while I was related to being the protected one. And I never saw the weight Dean bore, the emotions Dad didn't tolerate in Dean, in me, yes, but never in his eldest son. And failing…Dean didn't do it, **couldn't** do it, was something Dad found totally unacceptable, no matter what. A knife in Dean's leg, Dean being knocked out cold waking up seeing double, John Winchester never thought any of that should prevent a successful hunt. And certainly something as trivial as his son's feelings never came into play, not in the battle plans of General Winchester.' _For a moment Sam hated his father brightly, in spite of the guilt the thoughts flared in his chest. Yes, he loved his father, missed him deeply…and still hated the way his Dad had forgotten that he was supposed to be raising two sons that loved him, not two soldiers that feared him.

"I'm not Dad and neither are you. And that's alright with me," Sam said tightly, hoping Dean didn't rally to his father's defense. Because Sam couldn't have bore that, not with the thoughts rattling around in his head, not with Dean looking so much like his younger self, before Dean had mastered his walls, before he had locked away his emotions, when his pain was something Sam could sense and could feel. '_And his pain, when I do feel it, it hits me like it always has, right between the eyes, straight through the heart, as intently as if it were my pain.' _

"Yeah, me too," Dean quietly agreed, settling back more firmly against the wall. As his eyes slid from Sam to the window and the nearly full moon beyond, he felt conflicted, both guilty and comforted that the words he spoke were true.

Overwhelmingly relieved at Dean's reply, at his agreement, Sam hung his head, remembering only then to draw air into his chest. When he raised his eyes again to Dean, who sat nearly immobile, his eyes fixed on the moon, Sam realized that his brother had no intention of moving in the near future. Scampering forward, Sam claimed a spot on the floor beside Dean, his shoulder touching his brother's. As they both leaned back against the wall, awash in moonlight, silence fell between them as they looked at the wonder of the lighted sphere in the night sky.

When Sam broke the silence, his voice was soft, full of tender emotions, of sweet memories. "Remember how, in all those motel rooms, we used to huddle together, sleeping wherever the moonlight fell because you told me Dad saw the same moon we did and the moonlight fell on him same as it did us. It always made me feel closer to Dad when he was gone."

"Yeah, I remember. No wonder my back's never been straight, sitting on all those floors to sleep, huddled in corners, letting a perfectly good bed go to waste," Dean groused but his voice was too low, too near the edge to come off light.

"You did it for me, because I was scared," Sam acknowledged thickly before he turned to look at Dean. "Thank you, Dean."

Without breaking his focus on the sky, Dean winced at Sam's gratitude, unworthy of it until he revealing some of his soul. "It might have started for you but…I sometimes needed the reassurance that Dad was still. .." Dean broke off, swallowed hard a few times before he could get sound to come out of his thick throat. " …that if we were in danger he would know, he would come protect us." A moment passed before he confessed, his voice so low and brittle Sam flinched, "I really miss having a cavalry around to come to our rescue, Sammy."

The sentiment caught Sam off guard. It had been a long time since he had thought of his father as the cavalry, ready to ride in and save him. Someone else had filled those shoes in his father's absence…even in his father's presence. It seemed fitting to coin some of that person's words right then. "Well as long as I'm around nothing bad is gonna happen to you," Sam's conviction blazed in each word, in the look he leveled at his brother's profile.

A surprised spurt of laughter erupted from Dean as he turned to look at Sam. "Did it sound that lame when I said it to you?!" he quirked, his lips twisting up into a smile.

Too happy to see the smile tip up his brother's mouth, the light that appeared in the green eyes, to be affronted, Sam bumped his shoulder into Dean's and protested, "No, it was reassuring, you jerk," losing the battle to keep the smile off his own betraying lips.

With matching smirks the brothers looked at one another for a moment before again turning their focus upon the moon visible through the window. To Dean's surprise, grief didn't wash over him at the sight, instead some measure of peace settled in his soul. Unbidden, one of the Bible verses from one of the paintings in the doctor's clinic came to him, '_The sun shall not smite thee by day, not the moon by night._' Dean didn't put it past the good doctor to have said a prayer for him and Sam, for two strangers.

Oddly touched by that thought, Dean knew that he was the last person who could scoff at someone for putting value on strangers. Not when he had been risking his life for strangers since he was six, had wished them well, did everything he could so their futures would be better than his own. And in a life as solitary as his own, strangers were often the closest thing he had to friends, people who had been given a glimpse of the real Dean Winchester, hunter, protector, man.

But today, in a twist of fate, the strangers he had met had turned the tables on him, had cast him in the role of protected, instead of protector. And where shame should have fallen, relief had come, because if Dean Winchester had ever lost his way, had ever needed a light in the darkness it was this day. Clint, by his kindness, his heartfelt concern and honorable advice, had been the light Dean needed, had been his guide back to Sam, to where he belonged. And Ronald, the old man who had lost his son, had opened Dean's eyes to Sam's love for him and had shared his hard won wisdom; that loving someone wasn't something to be ashamed of, hidden, or denied, not when life was so precarious.

Unwilling to abandon that wisdom or lose what was most important to him, Dean knew it was time to bare his soul. Sam had always had his love, but scarcely ever the trust of his soul. Turning to look at Sam, the earnestness in his eyes visible even in the moonlight, Dean declared, "Sam, I…I love you. I know I don't say it enough, or at all but it shouldn't be something you don't know. It shouldn't be something I keep hidden from you. And, no matter what things you said to Dad, Dad loved you, always loved you and he knew you loved him back. You can't doubt that."

Tears sprang to Sam's eyes at his brother's declaration and something burned in his chest, but in an oh so good way. He didn't doubt Dean's love, never had. But hearing Dean say it…it meant more to him than anything else anyone had ever said to him, especially now that Dean was all he had left, that he was all Dean had left. It bonded them together, tighter than before, and he prayed, irrevocably so.

Reacting verbally to his brother's words about their father, Sam said amid his tear clogged throat, "I…I don't doubt Dad's love." But he dropped his eyes as he continued, regret in his tone, "I mean I wish…

Gently Dean interrupted, hating to see Sam suffer, "Look Sam, raised voices and heated words were just how you two said I love you." When Sam's eyes come up to meet his, Dean smiled, "Watching you two go at it was like watching an old married couple."

"Thanks Dean," Sam snorted, his small laugh a soothing sound in the quiet room. Tilting his head to the side as he looked to his brother, Sam easily proclaimed, "And I love you too."

His face scrunching up in mock disgust, Dean dramatically groaned, "Awww?! Don't say that!"

Sam smiled and teased, "What, you can say it but I can't?!" more than happy to indulge in their normal banter, to do something normal again, something that made things seem back on track.

"You already said that you loved me, dude," Dean shot back, feeling lighter in his heart than he had since their father had died.

"What?! When? When I was seven?!" Sam scoffed, raising his eyebrows for effect.

Though the answer came to Dean immediately, he didn't say it aloud. '_No, when you took me to Roy LeGrange, when you bought the mystical talking hands, now, by sitting here with me on this freakin' hard wooden floor in the middle of the night.' _He watched Sam's eyes spark with worry at his delay, at the seriousness that surely must have seeped into his face, at the love that he felt surging from everything he was, everything he would ever be, love for the brother that he had been blessed with._ "_No, when you spared the Impala," he finally verbalized before Sam could turn entirely too serious, could read him like an open text book.

Instead of giving a witty comeback, Sam could only nod his head, the truth too close to the bone, remembering too sharply when he feared that the car was going to be the last link he would have to his brother. Thickly he suggested, "You should go back to your bed," his thoughts dredging up mental pictures of Dean in that hospital bed, unmoving, breath forced from him, of today, the way Dean had leaned against him as they walked back into the house, the feel of his brother's body cradled in his arms as he carried him into this very bedroom. Dean was still fragile, still hurt, seemingly still in jeopardy of being taken away from him.

"Nah, sleep's overrated," Dean mumbled through a yawn, unconsciously bringing his hand to his chest where a twinge of pain flared but he obstinately settled his head back against the wall like it was just the right type of pillow.

Having gone rounds with his stubborn brother a million times before, Sam knew a losing battle when he saw one. Reaching over to the bed, he pulled the blankets down and spread them over Dean, right up to his chin, regardless of the heated glare he received before he settled some of the blanket over himself. Then, just like a hundred nights in their lives, the Winchester brothers stared up at the moon and thought of their Dad.

It didn't take long before Sam felt his brother's weight settle more heavily onto his shoulder, watched as Dean's eyes drifted shut and his head started to tilt toward his. Reaching over and pulling the slipping blanket up to better cover his brother's chest, Sam whispered, "I love you, Dean."

"I heard that," Dean groggily mumbled with mock accusation without opening his eyes as he nestled his head against Sam's shoulder.

Sam didn't fight the happiness that flooded him, didn't let some misplaced guilt make him feel bad about loving his brother, needing his brother, happy to have his brother alive and with him. "Good, cause you were supposed to. Night Dean."

"Night Sam," Dean returned, instantly giving himself up to sleep, reassured that, no matter what dreams came, Sam would be there when he woke up, that he wasn't alone.

With the moon in sight, his brother's reassuring weight beside him, Dean's head resting on his shoulder, Sam felt a comforting measure of peace settle in him. He wasn't naïve enough to think Dean's pain was gone, that his brother's guilt was assuaged, that things in the daylight wouldn't again tilt toward oppressive, but right now, in this moment, Sam had hope that he and Dean would get through this, would help each other deal with their father's death, would again discover that their bond was strong enough to weather even this storm, to weather any storm. That being together, being brothers was enough, maybe had always been enough to see them through the nights.

In the past, all those nights spent in moonlit rooms, it was Dean who had been Sam's light, Dean's shoulder that Sam had laid his head upon, the flesh and blood of Dean's hand that Sam's hand had latched onto for dear life, Dean's strength and courage that eased Sam's fears, gave the younger boy the ability to sleep the sleep of the well protected, the well loved. Now it was heartwarming for Sam to be able to return the favor, to be the brother doing the protecting, blanketing his brother with his love, disarming the power the darkness tried to weld. He would be Dean's moonlight for as long as he needed him to be, as long as he wanted him to be, as long as he _allowed_ him to be. Smiling in the moonlight, Sam rested his cheek against Dean's hair. Some favors were a joy to repay.

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THE END!!!

Psalms 121: 6-7 "The sun shall not smite thee by day, not the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; He shall preserve thy soul."

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Thank you so much for the overwhelming support for this little tag story!! It was hard and fun and so rewarding to write, to get those emotions out, to be able to put my own sappy, happy spin on the tale. (I would apologize for the sap but you all know I wouldn't mean it!) Thank you for allowing me the chance to distort what was there, and make up what wasn't expressed.

Again, a wonderful heartfelt thanks to Larabiehn and Diane for believing that I could "reveal" those oh so troubled boys' thoughts. Hope I did some justice to your request!

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.

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